Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/280

266 genially, "stepped out from under the Judge the prettiest you ever saw."

"He sure did," remarked the Honourable George, with a palpable effort to speak the American brogue. "A most flighty beast he was—nerves all gone—I dare say a hopeless neurasthenic."

And then when I would have rebuked him for so shamefully disappointing the ladies of the Onwards and Upwards Society, he began to tell me of the public house he had just left.

"I say, you know that Spilmer chap, he's a genuine murderer—he let me hold the weapon with which he did it—and he has blind relatives dependent upon him, or something of that sort, otherwise I fancy they'd have sent him to the gallows. And, by Gad! he's a witty scoundrel, what! Looking at his sign—leaving the settlement it reads, 'Last Chance,' but entering the settlement it reads, 'First Chance.' Last chance and first chance for a peg, do you see what I mean? I tried it out; walked both ways under the sign and looked up; it worked perfectly. Enter the settlement, 'First Chance'; leave the settlement, 'Last Chance.' Do you see what I mean? Suggestive, what! Witty! You'd never have expected that murderer-Johnny to be so subtle. Our own murderers aren't that way. I say, it's a tremendous wheeze. I wonder the press-chaps don't take it up. It's better than the blind factory, though the chap's mother or something is blind. What ho! But that's silly! To be sure one has nothing to do with the other. I say, have another, you chaps! I've not felt so fit in ages. I'm going to take up America!"

Plainly it was no occasion to use serious words to the man.