Page:Harold Macgrath--The girl in his house.djvu/25

 at home? … What? … Went away last April? … Thank you."

Armitage turned away from the telephone and twisted his mustache violently. Fear laid hold of him, that indescribable fear which, twist and turn as one may, keeps its face hidden. Below this fear stirred a primordial instinct: the instinct which causes a dog in the hour of carnal satiety to take the bare bone and bury it against a future need. Thunderstruck, Armitage recollected for the first time that he had not buried his bone.

"Pshaw! But that's utterly impossible."

He had bathed and dressed by the time the waiter returned—dressed in the same suit he had worn on board the ship. As the tantalizing aroma from the steak tickled his nostrils he forgot everything except the longing to satisfy a singular craving which had, metaphorically, ridden behind his saddle for six years. A thousand nights he had sat before acrid dung fires and dreamed of club steaks.

Finishing this delectable meal, a weirdly humorous idea popped into his head. He cleaned his pipe, put on a pair of