“Hum, hum,” murmured Mr. Clucking over the bill, “five and four’s nine, and five’s fourteen: your bill amounts already to one pound one and six. You’ve had a private sitting-room, sir?”
“Yes,” said Reuben.
“May I ask what luggage you have?”
“Only a small carpet-bag.”
“Then the lady who was with you, removed all her boxes without discharging the bill.”
“Certainly,” said Reuben. “It was never asked for.”
“Anthony,” exclaimed Mr. Clucking, in his severest City voice, “never let this occur again. When parties remove their luggage, parties must settle their accounts.”
Anthony murmured a humble assent to this doctrine, and shuffled away.
“Well, my dear sir,” continued Mr. Clucking, relapsing into the West-end, “as I said before, it is an awkward affair. I should telegraph to my friends,” he continued, subsiding into a chair, and using a tooth-pick.
“What friends?” asked Reuben, naïvely.
“Oh! that’s your own affair. I merely throw out a suggestion.”
“I don’t know whom to apply to,” exclaimed the ill-starred curate, clasping his hands. “I wouldn’t have Sir John Rooster know it for the world. Then the rector—he’s a close-fisted, hard man. I might try old Bantam, the clerk, though I doubt if he has the cash by him. Stay!” he said, as his eye suddenly lighted on a London Directory which lay on the table. “To think that I should forget William Cox, my dearest friend at college. He went into the medical profession and settled in London. Would you allow me, sir?” he said to Mr. Clucking, stretching out his hand for the Directory.
“Certainly,” said Mr. Clucking, calmly regarding Reuben from behind his toothpick with an air of quiet amusement, not unmixed with keen observation. The fact was, that Mr. Clucking could not make up his mind whether Reuben was a real greenhorn or a rogue simulating simplicity, though his knowledge of the world inclined him to the former belief.
“Cox—Cox—Cox—Cox,” muttered Reuben, running his finger down the page devoted to the tolerably prolific clan of that ilk. “I have it,” he exclaimed in triumph, “William Cox, M.R.C.S., Alector Villas, Bayswater. Mr. Clucking, if you will advance the funds necessary to pay for a cab, I shall be able to settle with everybody.”
“May I ask in return,” replied the landlord, “for the key of your carpet-bag?”
Reuben handed it to him.
“Now what shall I find in this bag, sir? But stay, Anthony shall examine it.”
Anthony returned in a few minutes, and reported that the bag with its contents, if pledged at a pawnbroker’s, might fetch about twelve-and-six.
“Take a cab,” said Mr. Clucking, in the same tone of voice as when the judge says “Take a rule.” “And you fellow, from what’s-his-name’s in the Strand, go with him.”
Mr. Clucking then lit a cigarette and took up a novel.
Reuben Fowler and Charles the waiter grew quite communicative in the cab. The spirits of the former were buoyant at the prospect of a speedy extrication from all his difficulties, while the latter, foreseeing that a private bonus to himself would probably be the result of the settlement, strove to make himself as agreeable as possible. The doctor’s house in Alector Villas was easily discernible by the red lamps, and the door was swiftly opened as doctor’s doors are wont to be.
“Mr. Cox at home?” asked Reuben.
“Yes, sir,” said the footman; “what name, sir?”
“Oh! say an old friend, a clergyman. I’ll give him an agreeable surprise,” whispered he to Charles.
The doctor upstairs was not in so good a humour as men are generally supposed to be in after dinner. He had just read a slashing review in the “Forceps” of his new work on gutta percha as a prophylactic agent and he had also received a very heavy bill from his wife’s milliner. So he entered his consulting room in somewhat ill-temper.
Reuben had left Charles the waiter in the hall. He was staggered at the alteration in his college friend’s appearance. Little more than six years had elapsed, and his head had become bald, while one of the attributes of Shakspeare’s fifth period in human life had destroyed what used to be a handsome figure.
“Your business, sir?” said the doctor, bowing stiffly.
“Your name is William Cox?” inquired Reuben.
“It is, sir,” answered the doctor.
“William Cox, do you recollect your old college friend?”
“I have had a good many college friends, I do not at this moment recognise you.”
“Can it be my William Cox?” murmured Reuben. “But it must be. He settled in London as a doctor. My dear Cox,” he continued, “will you assist your old friend Fowler in a small matter? I have had the misfortune to be robbed, and I require a small loan—”
“John!” exclaimed the doctor in a stentorian voice.
The footman promptly appeared.
“John,” said the doctor, “show this person the door. How dare you, sir, a perfect stranger, come here to demand money of me? At this time of night, too; eight o’clock! I believe it’s an organised attempt at robbery. So, sir,” he continued, perceiving Charles the waiter seated in the hall, “you’re his accomplice, are you?”
“Then you were never at Saint Shells’ College?” asked Reuben.
“Never, sir,” shouted the doctor. “Never, sir.”
“Well, it’s a mistake, that’s all,” replied Reuben mildly; “you need not put yourself in a passion. I’m very sorry, I’m sure.”
“And I’ll trouble you not to call names,” said Charles the waiter. “I never was an accomplice in my life, nor before a magistrate, which is more than—”
Here the door was violently slammed upon them, thereby putting an end to the altercation.
