Page:Bat Wing 1921.djvu/77

Rh behind the counter. “Time, please, gentlemen,” she said; “it is gone half-past two.”

“What!” exclaimed Mr. Camber, rising. “What is that? You decline to serve me, Mrs. Wootton?”

“Why, not at all, Mr. Camber,” answered the landlady, “but I can serve no one now; it’s after time.”

“You decline to serve me,” he muttered, his speech becoming slurred. “Am I, then, to be insulted?”

I caught a glance of entreaty from the landlady. “My dear sir,” I said, genially, “we must bow to the law, I suppose. At least we are better off here than in America.”

“Ah, that is true,” agreed Mr. Camber, throwing his head back and speaking the words as though they possessed some deep dramatic significance. “Yes, but such laws are an insult to every intelligent man.”

He sat down again rather heavily, and I stood looking from him to the landlady, and wondering what I should do. The matter was decided for me, however, in a way which I could never have foreseen. For, hearing a light footfall upon the step which led up to the bar-parlour, I turned—and there almost beside me stood a wrinkled little Chinaman!

He wore a blue suit and a tweed cap, he wore queer, thick-soled slippers, and his face was like a smiling mask hewn out of very old ivory. I could scarcely credit the evidence of my senses, since the Lavender Arms was one of the last places in which I should have looked for a native of China.

Mr. Colin Camber rose again, and fixing his melancholy eyes upon the newcomer:

“Ah Tsong,” he said in a tone of cold anger, “what are you doing here?”

Quite unmoved the Chinaman replied: