“My friend means to know something about that seventy pounds.”
“Seventy pounds! If you talk to me any more of seventy pounds, I will fly at your face.” As she spoke this she jumped across at him as though she were really on the point of attacking him with her nails, and he, in dismay, retreated to the door. “You, and your seventy pounds! Oh, you English! What mean mens you are! Oh! a Frenchman would despise to do it. Yes; or a Russian or a Pole. But you—you want it all down in black and white, like a butcher’s beel. You know nothing, and understand nothing, and can never speak, and can never hold your tongues. You have no head, but the head of a bull. A bull can break all the china in a shop—dash, smash, crash—all the pretty things gone in a minute! So can an Englishman. Your seventy pounds! You will come again to me for seventy pounds, I think.” In her energy she had acted the bull, and had exhibited her idea of the dashing, the smashing and the crashing, by the motion of her head and the waving of her hands.
“And you decline to say anything about the seventy pounds?” said Doodles, resolving that his courage should not desert him.
Whereupon the divine Sophie laughed. “Ha, ha, ha! I see you have not got on any gloves, Captain Booddle.”
“Gloves; no. I don’t wear gloves.”
“Nor your uncle with the leetle property in Warwickshire? Captain Clavering, he wears a glove. He is a handy man.” Doodles stared at her, understanding nothing of this. “Perhaps it is in your waistcoat pocket,” and she approached him fearlessly, as though she were about to deprive him of his watch.
“I don’t know what you mean,” said he, retreating.
“Ah, you are not a handy man, like my friend the other captain, so you had better go away. Yes; you had better go to Warwickshire. In Warwickshire, I suppose, they make ready for your Michaelmas dinners. You have four months to get fat. Suppose you go away and get fat.”
Doodles understood nothing of her sarcasm, but began to perceive that he might as well take his departure. The woman was probably a lunatic, and his friend Archie had no doubt been grossly deceived when he was sent to her for assistance. He had some faint idea that the seventy pounds might be recovered from such a madwoman; but in the recovery his friend would be exposed, and he saw that the money must be abandoned. At any rate, he had not been soft enough to dispose of any more treasure.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he said, very curtly.
“Good morning to you, Captain Booddle. Are you coming again another day?”
“Not that I know of, ma’am.”
“You are very welcome to stay away. I like your friend the better. Tell him to come and be handy with his glove. As for you—suppose you go to the leetle property.”
Then Captain Boodle went, and, as soon as he had made his way out into the open street, stood still and looked around him, that by the aspect of things familiar to his eyes he might be made certain that he was in a world with which he was conversant. While in that room with the Spy he had ceased to remember that he was in London—his own London, within a mile of his club, within a mile of Tattersall’s. He had been, as it were, removed to some strange world in which the tact, and courage, and acuteness natural to him had not been of avail to him. Madame Gordeloup had opened a new world to him—a new world of which he desired to make no further experience. Gradually he began to understand why he had been desired to prepare himself for Michaelmas eating. Gradually some idea about Archie’s glove glimmered across his brain. A wonderful woman certainly was the Russian spy—a phenomenon which in future years he might perhaps be glad to remember that he had seen in the flesh. The first racehorse which he might ever own and name himself he would certainly call the Russian spy. In the meantime, as he slowly walked across Berkeley Square, he acknowledged to himself that she was not mad, and acknowledged also that the less said about that seventy pounds the better. From thence he crossed Piccadilly, and sauntered down St. James’s Street into Pall Mall, revolving in his mind how he would carry himself with Clavvy. He, at any rate, had his ground for triumph. He had parted with no money, and had ascertained by his own wit that no available assistance from that quarter was to be had in the matter which his friend had in hand.
It was some hours after this when the two friends met, and at that time Doodles was up to his eyes in chalk and the profitable delights of pool. But Archie was too intent on his business to pay much regard to his friend’s proper avocation. “Well, Doodles,” he said, hardly waiting till his ambassador had finished his stroke and laid his ball close waxed to one of the cushions. “Well; have you seen her?”
“Oh, yes; I’ve seen her,” said Doodles, seating himself on an exalted bench which ran round the room, while Archie, with anxious eyes, stood before him.
“Well?” said Archie.
“She’s a rum ’un. Thank ’ee, Griggs; you always stand to me like a brick.” This was said to a young lieutenant who had failed to hit the captain’s ball, and now tendered him a shilling with a very bitter look.
“She is queer,” said Archie—“certainly.”
“Queer! By George, I’ll back her for the queerest bit of horseflesh going anyway about these diggings. I thought she was mad at first, but I believe she knows what she’s about.”
“She knows what she’s about well enough. She’s worth all the money if you can only get her to work.”
“Bosh, my dear fellow.”
“Why bosh? What’s up now?”
“Bosh! Bosh! Bosh! Me to play,
