have no truck with me. Never mind. D'you touch cards at all? Or only at
Epsom?"

Beneath the green mask the mouth tightened, and I could see that the
taunt had gone home. No man likes to be whipped before his underlings.

Nobby profited by the master's silence, and had devoured two more
chocolates before Berry spoke again--this time to me.

"Gentleman seems annoyed," he remarked. "I do hope he hasn't
misconstrued anything I've said. D'you think we ought to offer him
breakfast? Of course, five is rather a lot, but I dare say one of them
is a vegetarian, and you can pretend you don't care for haddock. Or they
may have some tripe downstairs. You never know. And afterwards we could
run them back to Limehouse. By the way, I wonder if I ought to tell him
about the silver which-not. It's only nickel, but I don't want to keep
anything back. Oh, and what about the dividend warrant? Of course it
wants riveting and--er--forging, and I don't think they'd recognize it,
but he could try. If I die before he goes, ask him to leave his address;
then, if he leaves anything behind, the butler can send it on. I
remember I left a pair of bed-socks once at Chatsworth. The Duke never
sent them on, but then they were perishable. Besides, one of them
followed me as far as Leicester. Instinct, you know. I wrote to _The
Field_ about it." He paused to shift uneasily in his seat. "You know, if
I have to sustain this pose much longer, I shall get railway spine or a
hare lip or something."

"Hush," said I. "What did Alfred Austin say in 1895?"

"I know," said Berry. "'Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet