If
anybody told me he was the devil, I'd believe him soon enough. A bad
'un, James, or I don't know the breed. An evil man who seems to pollute
the very air you breathe."
James was not so sure of it.
"He give me half a crown for fetching of a cab yesterday, and told me
to go to the music-hall with it. He must have a lot of money, for he
never smokes his cigars more than half-way through, and he wears a
different scarf-pin every day. That's wot comes of observation, Mr.
John. I could tell you all the different pairs of trousers he's worn
for the last three weeks, and so I'm going to make my fortune as the
advertisements say."
Mr. John would not argue about that. The bell of the inner office now
tinkled, and that was an intimation that the Count Nicholas Florian was
to be admitted to the Holy of Holies. So the old man hurried away and,
opening the sacred door with circumspection, narrowly escaped being
knocked down by an enraged and hasty cat--glad to escape that inferno
at any cost.
"You rang, sir?"
Ambrose Cleaver, thirty-three years of age, square-jawed, fair-haired,
a florid complexion and with a wonderful pair of clear blue eyes,
admitted that he did ring.
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