Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 7.djvu/183

Rh apartment adorned with paintings in elegant frames. There a servant handed him the Times uncut, the tiresome cutting of which he managed with a steadiness of hand which denoted great practice in this difficult operation. The reading of this journal occupied Phileas Fogg until a quarter before four, and that of the Standard, which succeeded it, lasted until dinner. This repast passed off in the same way as the breakfast, with the addition of "Royal British Sauce."

At twenty minutes before six the gentleman reappeared in the large hall, and was absorbed in the reading of the Morning Chronicle.

Half an hour later various members of the Reform Club entered and came near the fire-place, in which a coal fire was burning. They were the usual partners of Phileas Fogg, like himself passionate players of whist; the engineer Andrew Stuart, the bankers John Sullivan and Samuel Fallentin, the brewer Thomas Flanagan, Gauthier Ralph, one of the directors of the Bank of England—rich and respected personages, even in this club counting among its members the elite of trade and finance.

"Well, Ralph," asked Thomas Flanagan, "how about that robbery?"

"Why," replied Andrew Stuart, "the bank will lose the money."

"I hope, on the contrary," said Gauthier Ralph, "that we shall put our hands on the robber. Detectives, very skillful fellows, have been sent to America and the Continent, to all the principal ports of embarkation and debarkation, and it will be difficult for this fellow to escape."

"But you have the description of the robber?" asked Andrew Stuart.

"In the first place, he is not a robber," replied Gauthier Ralph, seriously.

"How, he is not a robber, this fellow who has abstracted fifty-five thousand pounds in bank-notes?"

"No," replied Gauthier Ralph.

"Is he then a manufacturer?" said John Sullivan.

"The Morning Chronicle assures us that he is a gentleman."

The party that made this reply was no other than Phileas Fogg, whose head then emerged from the mass of papers