Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/70

 bar with its two or three dozen oaken, strong-backed chairs that stood round against the farther wall, each fitted with its genial occupant—cab drivers and small tradesmen of the vicinity; the black settle where the pompous landlord presided and gave his opinion on politics, cricket, and the lamentable shortcomings of the County Council; the neat, sanded floor; the small, round window high up on the wall, with a wheel ventilator in one of the panes.

“A mug of bitters,” he called to the bar maid, sat down, and picked up a copy of the Times which a former occupant of the chair had left.

Idly he turned to the second page. Square in its center was a large advertisement printed in heavy, extravagant Gothic type. He read, read again, sat up straight, tore off the page, crammed it in his pocket, and rose.

“I say!” he shouted excitedly to the bar maid. “Never mind that mug of bitters!”—and he picked up his hat and ran out of the saloon bar, the hotel, and away across Soho Square as fast as his legs would let him, while the landlord looked after him, open-eyed, open-mouthed.

“I don't know wot this 'ere young generytion is comin' to,” he said, disapprovingly, to his neighbor, Tom Jenks, the glazier. “Well—never mind—Lloyd George, as I was a-sayin' of just now, will ruin England as sure as …”

Hector, meanwhile, had come to a stop beneath a lamp post that squinted down on the oozy London pavement with a yellow, arrogant eye.