The Town Traveller Part 31

"There's been a disturbance over yonder," one replied, carelessly pointing to a spot where other helmets could be discerned.

Thither Gammon made his way. He found police and public gathered thickly about some person invisible; a vigorous effort and he got near enough to see a rec.u.mbent body, quite still, on which the flakes of snow were falling.

"Let me look at him," he requested of a constable who would have pushed him away. "It's a friend of mine, I believe."

Yes, it was Lord Polperro, unconscious, and with blood about his mouth.

The police were waiting as a matter of professional routine to see whether he recovered his senses; they had, of course, cla.s.sed him as "drunk and incapable."

"I say," Gammon whispered to one of them, "let me tell you who that is."

The conference led to the summoning of a cab, which by police direction was driven to the nearest hospital, St. Bartholomew's. Here Gammon soon learnt that the case was considered serious, so serious that the patient has been put to bed and must there remain.

Utterly done up Gammon threw himself into the cab to be driven to Kennington Road. When he reached Mrs. Bubb's he was fast asleep, but there a voice addressed him which restored his consciousness very quickly indeed.

CHAPTER XXIII

HIS LORDs.h.i.+P RETIRES

It was the voice of Greenacre, unsteady with wrath, stripped utterly of its bland intonations.

"So here you are! What have you been up to, Gammon? Are you drunk?"

Just as the cab drove up Greenacre was turning reluctantly from the house door, where he had held a warm parley with Mrs. Bubb; the landlady irritable at being disturbed in her first sleep, the untimely visitor much ruffled in temper by various causes.

"Drunk!" echoed Gammon, as he leapt to the pavement and clutched at Greenacre's arm. "Drunk yourself, more likely! Where have you been since you sent that telegram? Hold on a minute." He paid the cabman.

"Now then, give an account of yourself."

"What the devil do you mean?" cried the other. "What account do I owe to you?"

"Well, I might answer that question," said Gammon with a grin, "if I took time to calculate."

"We can't talk in the street at this time of night, with snow coming down. Suppose we go up to your room?"

"As you please. But I advise you to talk quietly; the walls and the floors are not over thick."

The latch-key admitted them, and they went as softly as possible up the stairs, only one involuntary kick from Greenacre on sounding wood causing his host to mutter a malediction. By a light in the bedroom they viewed each other, and Greenacre showed astonishment.

"So you _are_ drunk, or have been You've got a black eye, and your clothes are all pulled about. You've been in a row."

"You're not far wrong. Tell' me what you've been doing, and you shall hear where the row was and who was with me."

"Gammon, you've been behaving like a cad--a scoundrel. I didn't think it of you. You went to that place in Sloane Street. No use lying; I've been told you were there. You must have found out I was going away, and you've played old Harry. I didn't think you were a fellow of that sort; I had more faith in you."

Upon mutual recrimination followed an exchange of narratives.

Greenacre's came first. He was the victim, he declared, of such ill luck as rarely befell a man. Arriving at Euston by the Irish mail, and hastening to get a cab, whom should he encounter on the very platform but a base-minded ruffian who nursed a spite against him; a low fellow who had taken advantage of his good nature, and who--in short, a man from whom it was impossible to escape, for several good reasons, until they had spent some hours together. He got off a telegram to Lord Polperro, and could do no more till nearly eleven o'clock at night.

Arriving headlong at Lowndes Mansions, he learnt with disgust what had gone on there in his absence. And now, what defence had Gammon to offer? What was his game?

"I guess pretty well what yours is, my boy," answered the listener.

"And I'm not sorry I've spoilt it."

Thereupon he related the singular train of events between breakfast time this (or rather yesterday) morning and the ringing out of the old year. When it came to a description of Lord Polperro's accident Greenacre lost all control of himself.

"a.s.s! blockhead! You know no better than to let such a man in his state of health get mixed up in a crowd of roughs at midnight? Good G.o.d! He may die!"

"I shouldn't wonder a bit," returned Gammon coolly. "If he does it may be awkward for you, eh?"

From his story he had omitted one detail, thinking it better to keep silence about the burning of the will until he learnt more than Greenacre had as yet avowed to him.

"Fool!" bl.u.s.tered the other. "Idiot!"

"You'd better stop that, Greenacre, or I shan't be the only man with a black eye. Do you want to be kicked downstairs? or would you prefer to drop out of the window? Keep a civil tongue in your head."

At this moment both were startled into silence by a violent thumping at the wall.

It came from the room which used to be occupied by Polly Sparkes, and was accompanied by angry verbal remonstrance from a lodger disturbed in his slumbers.

"Didn't I tell you?" muttered Gammon. "You'd better get home and go to bed; the walk will cool you down. It's all up with your little game for the present. Look here," he added in a friendly whisper, "you may as well tell me. Has he another wife?"

"Find out," was Greenacre's surly answer; "and go to the devil!"

A rush, a scuffling, a crash somewhere which shook the house. The disturbed lodger flung open his door and shouted objurgations. From below sounded the shrill alarm of Mrs. Bubb, from elsewhere the anxious outcries of Mrs. Cheeseman and her husband.

Amid all this Greenacre and his quondam friend somehow reached the foot of the stairs, where the darkness that enveloped their struggle was all at once dispersed by a candle in the hand of Mrs. Bubb.

"Don't alarm yourself," shouted Gammon cheerily, "I'm only kicking this fellow out. No one hurt."

"Well, Mr. Gammon, I do think--"

But the landlady's protest was cut short by a loud slamming of the house-door.

"It's nothing," said the man of commerce, breathing hard. "Very sorry to have disturbed you all. It shan't happen again. Good night, Mrs.

Bubb."

He ran up to his room, laughed a good deal as he undressed, and was asleep five minutes afterwards. Before closing his eyes he said to himself that he must rise at seven; business claimed him tomorrow, and he felt it necessary to see Mrs. Clover (or Lady Polperro) with the least possible delay. However tired, Gammon could always wake at the hour he appointed. The dark, snowy morning found him little disposed to turn out; he had something of a headache, and a very bad taste in the mouth; for all that he faced duty with his accustomed vigour. Of course he had to leave the house without breakfast, but a cup of tea at the nearest eating-house supplied his immediate wants, and straightway he betook himself to the china shop near Battersea Park Road.

That was not a pleasant meeting with his friend Mrs. Clover. To describe all that had happened yesterday would have taxed his powers at any time; at eight-thirty a.m. on the first of January, his head aching and his stomach ill at ease, he was not likely to achieve much in the way of lucid narrative. Mrs. Clover regarded him with a severe look.

His manifest black eye, and an unwonted slovenliness of appearance, could not but suggest that he had taken leave of the bygone year in a too fervid spirit. His explanations she found difficulty in believing, but the upshot of it all--the fact that her husband lay at St.

Bartholomew's Hospital--seemed beyond doubt, and this it was that mainly concerned her.

"I shall go at once," she said in a hard tone, turning her face from him.

"But there's something else I must tell you," pursued Gammon, with much awkwardness. "You don't know--who to ask for."

The woman's eyes, even now not in their depths unkindly, searched him with a startled expression.