Page:When It Was Dark.djvu/141

Rh replied. "I can't stand cigars, and I've left my pipe at the Clergy House."

They looked for cigarettes in the silver box lined with cedar which stood on the mantel-shelf, but some one had smoked them all and the box was empty.

"Never mind," Spence said; "I've been meaning to run out and get a late Westminster and I'll buy some cigarettes, too. There's a shop at the Holborn end of the Lane, next to the shop where the oysters come from, and it won't be shut yet."

In a few minutes he came back with several packets of cigarettes in his hand. "I've brought Virginian," he said; "I know you can't stand Egyptian, none of us can, and if these are cheap, they're good, too."

Till eleven o'clock Stokes played to them — Chopin's wild music of melancholy and fire — and as the hour struck he went home.

Gortre and Spence sat and talked casually after he had gone, about the music they had heard, the cartoon in the evening paper, anything that came.

Basil had not been smoking during the evening. He had been too intent upon the nocturnes, and now he felt a want of tobacco. One of the packets of cigarettes lay by him on the table. He pulled up the flaps and took one. Without thinking what he was doing he drew a little photograph, highly finished and very clear, from the tiny cardboard case.

He glanced at it casually.

The thing was one of those pictures of burlesque actresses which are given away with this kind of tobacco. A tall girl with short skirts and a large picture hat was shown in a coquettish attitude that was meant to be full of invitation.

Basil looked at it steadily with a curious expression on his face. Then he took a large reading-glass from the