Page:The Avenger.djvu/141

Rh "I should like a liqueur," she remarked, with apparent irrelevance. "Benedictine!"

They were seated in front of a small table, and were at times the object of expectant contemplation on the part of a magnificent individual in livery and knee-breeches. Wrayson summoned him and ordered two Benedictines.

"Now I don't mind telling you," the lady continued, leaning over towards him confidentially, "that I'm dead off that old man who came prying round and took me out to dinner, to pump me about poor Barney! He didn't get much out of me. For one thing, I don't know much. But the little I do know I'd sooner tell you than him."

"You're very kind," Wrayson murmured. "He used to come to these places a good deal, didn't he?"

She nodded assent.

"He was always either here or at the Empire. He wasn't a bad sort, Barney, although he was just like all the rest of them, close with his money when he was sober, and chucking it about when he'd had a drop too much. What did you want to know about him in particular?"

"Well, for one thing," Wrayson answered, "where he got his money from."

She shook her head.

"He was always very close about that," she said. "The only story I ever heard him tell was that he'd made it mining in South Africa."

"You have really heard him say that?" Wrayson asked.

"Half a dozen times," she declared.

"That proves, at any rate," he remarked thoughtfully, "that there was some mystery about his income,