"D'you know where he was last night?" he asks me.
"Yes," I says; "Caxton Hall, wasn't it?—meeting to demand the release of Miss Clebb."
He leans across the table till his face was within a few inches of mine.
"Guess again," he says.
I wasn't doing any guessing. He had hurt me with the walnut table, and I was feeling a bit short-tempered.
"Oh! don't make a game of it," I says. "It's too early in the morning."
"At the Earl's Court Exhibition," he says; "dancing the tango with a lady that he picked up in St. James's Park."
"Well," I says, "why not? He don't often get much fun." I thought it best to treat it lightly.
He takes no notice of my observation.
"A rival comes upon the scene," he continues—"a fat-headed ass, according to my information—and they have a stand-up fight. He gets run in and spends the night in a Vine Street police cell."
I suppose I was grinning without knowing it.
176
