With a cheery laugh he turned back into his club, and for a moment or two the ex-soldier stood looking after him. Then with great deliberation he turned to the chauffeur, and spat reflectively.
"If there was more like 'im, and less like 'im"—he indicated a stout vulgarian rolling past in a large car and dreadful clothes—"things wouldn't 'appen such as is 'appening to-day. Ho! no…"
With which weighty dictum Mr. Mullings, late private of the Royal Loamshires, turned his steps in the direction of the "obliging fellah in a black coat."
II
Inside the Junior Sports Club, Hugh Drummond was burying his nose in a large tankard of the ale for which that cheery pot-house was still famous. And in the intervals of this most delightful pastime he was trying to make up his mind on a peculiarly knotty point. Should he or should he not communicate with the police on the matter? He felt that as a respectable citizen of the country it was undoubtedly his duty to tell somebody something. The point was who to tell and what to tell him. On the subject of Scotland Yard his ideas were nebulous; he had a vague impression that one filled in a form and waited—tedious operations, both.
"Besides, dear old flick," he murmured abstractedly to the portrait of the founder of the club, who had drunk the cellar dry and then died, "am I a respectable citizen? Can it be said with any certainty, that if I filled in a form saying all that had happened in the last two days, I shouldn't be put in quod myself?"
