God! how I knocked the pheasants!" A clerk showed his head
at the door, with a meaning gesture. "I must go now,"
said Semple, briskly, and led the way out to another room.
He halted here, and dismissed his caller with the
brief injunction, "Don't go away without seeing me."
It was the noon-hour, and the least-considered grades
of the City's slaves were in the streets on the quest
for cheap luncheons. Thorpe noted the manner in which some
of them studied the large bill of fare placarded beside
a restaurant door; the spectacle prompted him luxuriously
to rattle the gold coins remaining in his pocket.
He had been as anxious about pence as the hungriest
of those poor devils, only a week before. And now! He
thrust up the door in the roof of the cab, and bade
the driver stop at his bank. Thence, after some brief
but very agreeable business, and a hurried inspection
of the "Court" section of a London Directory, he drove
to a telegraph station and despatched two messages.
They were identical in terms. One sought General Kervick
at his residence--he was in lodgings somewhere in the Hanover
Square country--and the other looked for him at his club.
Both begged him to lunch at the Savoy at two o'clock.
There was time and to spare, now. Thorpe dismissed the cab
at his hotel--an unpretentious house in Craven Street,
and sent his luggage to his rooms.
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