Page:The Firm of Gridlestone (1890).djvu/129

Rh black spot which covered him. He stooped, and pushed back the bolt.

"Now, open it! Ged, if you don't look alive I'll have to blow a hole in you afther all. You wouldn't be the first man I've killed, nor the last maybe."

Ezra opened the door precipitately.

"Now walk before me into the strate."

It struck the waiters at Nelson's well-known restaurant as a somewhat curious thing that their two customers should walk out with such very grave faces and in so unsociable a manner. "C'est la froideur Anglaise!" remarked little Alphonse Lefanue to a fellow-exile as they paused in the laying of tables to observe the phenomenon. Neither of them noticed that the stout gentleman behind, with his hand placed jauntily in the breast of his coat, was still clutching the brown handle of a pistol.

There was a hansom standing at the door and Major Clutterbuck stepped into it.

"Look ye here, Girdlestone," he said, as the latter stood looking sulkily up and down the street. "You should learn a lesson from this. Never attack a man unless you're sure that he's unarmed. You may git shot, if you do."

Ezra continued to stare gloomily into vacancy and took no notice of his late companion's remark.

"Another thing," said the major. "You must niver take it for granted that every man you mate is as great a blackgaird as yourself."

The young merchant gave him a malignant glance from his dark eyes and was turning to go, but the gentleman in the cab stretched out his hand to detain him.

"One more lesson," he said. "Never funk a pistol unless you are sure there's a carthridge inside. Mine hadn't. Drive on, cabby!" With which parting shot the gallant major rattled away down Piccadilly with a fixed determination never again to leave his rooms without a few of Eley's No. 4 central fires in his pocket.