Ainsworth shook his billiard-cue with unmistakable emphasis in the
stranger's face.
"Get out," he cried irascibly. "You're drunk, and I don't want to talk
to you!" He pushed his annoyer rudely away, but the latter returned to
the attack, whereupon Bertrand Trascott intervened.
"Have patience, Cyril," he begged. "The man evidently has a reason for
his persistence. Now, sir, what is it? We would like to go on with our
game."
The stranger who had circled in to the corner-table in the billiard-room
of the great hotel and stopped their play presented an uninviting and
ludicrous appearance.
His head and shoulders reminded Trascott of those of a dissipated
Austrian virtuoso whom he knew well and whose brilliance had become very
spasmodic on account of relapses to the same vice which apparently ruled
the stranger. The resemblance was quite close, embodying the
uncontrolled, tremulous chin and lips surmounted by a fiercely-curled
wisp of moustache, the hawked nose, narrowed eyes and prominent, bony
cheeks, with a pair of puttied ears sprouting from his hair like old
mushrooms in the grass, while a pinched, sunken neck failed to fill his
peaked shoulders.
Trascott thought that if both the Austrian virtuoso and the portly
butler who had come to be looked on as an institution at Britton Hall
were cut in two, and the upper half of the virtuoso pieced to the lower,
corpulent section of the Honorable Oliver's servant the result would be
the prototype of the stranger who had undertaken to tack among the
billiard-tables.
"What do you want?" he asked the man, with more severity.
The questioned one surveyed Trascott for a space, recognized his
curate's cloth and decided he had no business with him, for his eyes
flashed aggressively upon the lawyer, who was again preparing for the
execution of the stroke that the man had spoiled.
Ainsworth's back was turned, so the intruder jogged his right elbow for
attention with the result that the lawyer's ball, deflected at right
angles, leaped across the next table and spread confusion among a group
of Frenchmen playing there.
This second interruption of the stringing of a long break and the titter
of idle observers, combined with the French stares of contempt, was not
at all conducive to the regaining of Ainsworth's equanimity.
"By gad, sir, get out of here," he admonished, "or I'll very soon have
the concierge throw you out!"
"You?" asked the stranger, with a belligerent glare.
"Exactly!" Ainsworth answered emphatically. He looked as if he would
quite gladly exempt the concierge from consideration and perform the
operation himself.
Trascott had been roaming the room in search of an hotel servant who
could lead this obstinate fellow away; there being none about, however,
he compromised on a marker and returned to the intruder.
He still concentrated his attention on the lawyer with that same
belligerent glare, though in his eyes a rising flicker of apprehension
betrayed the inward reflection that he had somehow caught a Tartar in
this smooth-faced, perfectly-fed man with coat off and billiard-cue in
hand.
"You're Britton?" he inquired in a thick, heavy voice.
"I'm nothing of the sort," the irate lawyer returned.
The stranger took a step nearer and leaned his hip against the
billiard-table.
"You deny it?" he snarled vindictively. "The assistant concierge
informed me that you were Britton."
Ainsworth flourished the cue in his hand suggestively.
"Then the assistant concierge is an ass, like yourself," he said.
"There are two of you, and this hotel is no place for such a team."
Trascott pushed forward the marker he had procured.
"Come, monsieur," said the marker. "I think there are better places
than this for you."
The stranger whirled and savagely struck away the persuading fingers
with which the polite Frenchman had grasped his arm.
"Look out for yourself," he stormed, "or I'll have the manager pack you
off to-morrow, my fine fellow. Let me tell you that you can't turn men
of my standing into the street. I have engaged rooms and paid for them
in advance, and I'll go where I d-d please in this hotel-and do what I
please also!"
"No, you won't, my friend," warned Ainsworth, tapping him on the
shoulder with quiet determination. "You won't come in here twice to
insult me and interrupt my play. Just keep that in your muddled mind!"
"I was informed that you were a certain Britton I was searching for,"
said the other bluntly, in the spirit of rude apology.
"Do I look like Britton?" cried the lawyer, testily. "I stand five feet
six, while Britton stands six feet one. I weigh one hundred and fifty
pounds; Britton weighs two hundred and ten. Britton dances in the
ballroom with the ladies and brings them ices, but I play billiards with
a curate. I ask you again, do I resemble him? No, you say. And I'll
tell you something else, too! Britton wouldn't have suffered your
impudence for this length of time. He's a quick-blooded beggar, and
he'd have jolly well twisted your neck by now."
"Will you come out, sir?" begged the marker, making a second attempt, at
the importunations of Trascott.
The stranger eyed him and raised a hand as if to strike, then diverted
the hand to his waistcoat pocket and threw his card on the table.
"Take that card to the manager as my complaint, and tell him to dismiss
you," he said, somewhat haughtily. "I'm Christopher Morris, promoter of
the Yukon Dredging Company."
The servant took the pasteboard, a little awed. Ainsworth had not caught
the stranger's surname, but he snapped at the mention of his especial
enterprise.
"The Yukon Dredging Company!" he exclaimed suspiciously. "If you are
the promoter of that scheme, I warn you to watch out for me. I'm
Ainsworth, the law-machine, and I'm convinced that the Dredging Company
is a mere swindle. Be careful! I'll put the Crown after you at the
very first opportunity."
The object of his censure sniffed in scorn, but Ainsworth continued:
"You invited my antagonism. Now perhaps you'll regret it. If anything
angers me, it is the loss of my self-respect, and those Frenchmen took
me for an idiot. But you sound decidedly out of place next the Sahara,
my friend. You should be at the Arctic end of a different continent.
What are you hunting in Algiers-floating capital?"
"No," was the answer. "I am hunting my wife. I arrived but an hour ago
from Tangier, where the cursed doctors quarantined me for a chill which
they insisted on calling fever. When after twenty days' hammering at
their thick heads I convinced them of their mistake, they let me out,
and I found my wife had hurried away to escape infection." He laughed,
and with a cold, indignant significance intensifying his words,
repeated: "Hurried away to escape infection!"
"Your wife," echoed the puzzled lawyer. "What has that to do with your
offensive attitude? What has that to do with Rex Britton?"
"They tell me that in finding Britton I shall find my wife!"
Understanding rushed upon Ainsworth, and he, as well as Trascott, was
stirred to fiery excitement. He shook the man roughly by the shoulder.
"Your name?" he breathlessly demanded. "What did you say was your name?"
"Morris-Christopher Morris," was the answer. "My wife's name is Maud,
and the devil gave her the prettiest face in England."
Ainsworth passed his hand across his forehead. His face held the first
expression of dismay that the curate had ever seen there. To Trascott
it was evident that the lawyer's unconcealed mistrust of the woman
concerned had not extended to such an unforeseen contingency as now
existed upon the statement of Morris.
The barrister was not looking at the curate and could not see the
accompanying signs of extreme agitation in the latter's countenance.
The former seemed to be weighing a doubtful point in his mind, and when
he spoke it was as to himself in a musing, philosophical manner.
"This is either a drunken hallucination, insanity, or the truth," he
said, softly. "Let us have a test!" He dropped a vesta match upon the
green baize of the table.
"Pick that up," he said to Morris.
The man stared an instant and obeyed. Ainsworth watched him closely.
His fingers went down with disconcerting steadiness, closed unerringly
over the match and returned it to the barrister. The latter raised
appealing eyes to his friend and said:
"He drinks, but he is not overly drunk now. I'm afraid it is the truth."
Trascott, his earnest face all troubled and his lips compressed in a
grim line, shook his head.
"This is something like what I feared," he groaned.