Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/67

 you're bloomin' well down and bout, s'pose we talks business. I repeat wot I sed to the Hemperor of Dollars and Cents upstairs. I ain't the sort to bear a grudge. And I want to 'elp you myke your w'y in the world, and I can give you a tip 'ow to myke oodles of the ready—thousands and thousands of guineas—guineas, mark you, not pounds! I needs a young lad like you. You see, there's a country over in Asia called Tamerlanistan—and the young princess wot rules it …”

That's as far as he got.

For, at that very moment, the younger man's fist struck him square between the eyes. He dropped like a log; and, for several minutes, until the crimson-coated, gold-gallooned commissionaire of the Savoy Hotel dashed a glass of water in his face, Mr. Preserved Higgins was oblivious to everything except a motley and brilliant collection of shooting stars that suffused his brains; while Hector, employing tactics he had learned at rugger football, sidestepped a policeman and an intoxicated gentleman in evening dress, catapulted between two costermongers, a man-o'-war's man, three ladies with bedraggled ostrich plumes on on their hats, a Cheapside Hebrew who sold baked potatoes, and a sightseeing Wessex yeoman in velveteens, and beat a strategic retreat toward Soho.

It was now too late to return to the East India Docks and find out about passage to Calcutta; but he was more firmly resolved than ever that he must put as many miles as possible, not only between himself and England, the England of “county” and Belgravia and the Badminton Club and the Ninety-Second Dragoons