Indignation awoke in the mind of Pitman. 'Those spectacles were to be mine,' he cried. 'They are an essential part of my disguise.'
'I am going to wear them myself,' replied Michael; and he added, with some show of truth, 'There would be a devil of a lot of suspicion aroused if we both wore spectacles.'
'O, well,' said the assenting Pitman, 'I rather counted on them; but of course, if you insist. And at any rate, here is the cart at the door.'
While the men were at work, Michael concealed himself in the closet among the debris of the barrel and the wires of the piano; and as soon as the coast was clear the pair sallied forth by the lane, jumped into a hansom in the King's Road, and were driven rapidly toward town. It was still cold and raw and boisterous; the rain beat strongly in their faces, but Michael refused to have the glass let down; he had now suddenly donned the character of cicerone, and pointed out and lucidly commented on the sights of London, as they drove. 'My dear fellow,' he said, 'you don't seem to know anything of your native city. Suppose we visited the Tower? No? Well, perhaps it's a trifle out of our way. But, anyway--Here, cabby, drive round by Trafalgar Square!' And on that historic battlefield he insisted on drawing up, while he criticized the statues and gave the artist many curious details (quite new to history) of the lives of the celebrated men they represented.
It would be difficult to express what Pitman suffered in the cab: cold, wet, terror in the capital degree, a grounded distrust of the commander under whom he served, a sense of imprudency in the matter of the low-necked shirt, a bitter sense of the decline and fall involved in the deprivation of his beard, all these were among the ingredients of the bowl. To reach the restaurant, for which they were deviously steering, was the first relief. To hear Michael bespeak a private room was a second and a still greater. Nor, as they mounted the stair under the guidance of an unintelligible alien, did he fail to note with gratitude the fewness of the persons present, or the still more cheering fact that the greater part of these were exiles from the land of France. It was thus a blessed thought that none of them would be connected with the Seminary; for even the French professor, though admittedly a Papist, he could scarce imagine frequenting so rakish an establishment.
The alien introduced them into a small bare room with a single table, a sofa, and a dwarfish fire; and Michael called promptly for more coals and a couple of brandies and sodas.
'O, no,' said Pitman, 'surely not--no more to drink.'
'I don't know what you would be at,' said Michael plaintively. 'It's positively necessary to do something; and one shouldn't smoke before meals I thought that was understood. You seem to have no idea of hygiene.' And he compared his watch with the clock upon the chimney-piece.
Pitman fell into bitter musing; here he was, ridiculously shorn, absurdly disguised, in the company of a drunken man in spectacles, and waiting for a champagne luncheon in a restaurant painfully foreign. What would his principals think, if they could see him? What if they knew his tragic and deceitful errand?
From these reflections he was aroused by the entrance of the alien with the brandies and sodas. Michael took one and bade the waiter pass the other to his friend.
Pitman waved it from him with his hand. 'Don't let me lose all self-respect,' he said.
'Anything to oblige a friend,' returned Michael. 'But I'm not going to drink alone. Here,' he added to the waiter, 'you take it.' And, then, touching glasses, 'The health of Mr Gideon Forsyth,' said he.
'Meestare Gidden Borsye,' replied the waiter, and he tossed off the liquor in four gulps.
'Have another?' said Michael, with undisguised interest. 'I never saw a man drink faster. It restores one's confidence in the human race.
But the waiter excused himself politely, and, assisted by some one from without, began to bring in lunch.
Michael made an excellent meal, which he washed down with a bottle of Heidsieck's dry monopole. As for the artist, he was far too uneasy to eat, and his companion flatly refused to let him share in the champagne unless he did.
'One of us must stay sober,' remarked the lawyer, 'and I won't give you champagne on the strength of a leg of grouse. I have to be cautious,' he added confidentially. 'One drunken man, excellent business--two drunken men, all my eye.'
On the production of coffee and departure of the waiter, Michael might have been observed to make portentous efforts after gravity of mien. He looked his friend in the face (one eye perhaps a trifle off), and addressed him thickly but severely.
'Enough of this fooling,' was his not inappropriate exordium. 'To business. Mark me closely. I am an Australian. My name is John Dickson, though you mightn't think it from my unassuming appearance. You will be relieved to hear that I am rich, sir, very rich. You can't go into this sort of thing too thoroughly, Pitman; the whole secret is preparation, and I can get up my biography from the beginning, and I could tell it you now, only I have forgotten it.'
'Perhaps I'm stupid--' began Pitman.
'That's it!' cried Michael. 'Very stupid; but rich too--richer than I am. I thought you would enjoy it, Pitman, so I've arranged that you were to be literally wallowing in wealth. But then, on the other hand, you're only an American, and a maker of india-rubber overshoes at that. And the worst of it is--why should I conceal it from you?--the worst of it is that you're called Ezra Thomas. Now,' said Michael, with a really appalling seriousness of manner, 'tell me who we are.'
The unfortunate little man was cross-examined till he knew these facts by heart.
'There!' cried the lawyer. 'Our plans are laid. Thoroughly consistent--that's the great thing.'
'But I don't understand,' objected Pitman.
'O, you'll understand right enough when it comes to the point,' said Michael, rising.
'There doesn't seem any story to it,' said the artist.
'We can invent one as we go along,' returned the lawyer.
'But I can't invent,' protested Pitman. 'I never could invent in all my life.'
'You'll find you'll have to, my boy,' was Michael's easy comment, and he began calling for the waiter, with whom he at once resumed a sparkling conversation.
It was a downcast little man that followed him. 'Of course he is very clever, but can I trust him in such a state?' he asked himself. And when they were once more in a hansom, he took heart of grace.
'Don't you think,' he faltered, 'it would be wiser, considering all things, to put this business off?'
'Put off till tomorrow what can be done today?' cried Michael, with indignation. 'Never heard of such a thing! Cheer up, it's all right, go in and win--there's a lion-hearted Pitman!'
At Cannon Street they enquired for Mr Brown's piano, which had duly arrived, drove thence to a neighbouring mews, where they contracted for a cart, and while that was being got ready, took shelter in the harness-room beside the stove. Here the lawyer presently toppled against the wall and fell into a gentle slumber; so that Pitman found himself launched on his own resources in the midst of several staring loafers, such as love to spend unprofitable days about a stable. 'Rough day, sir,' observed one. 'Do you go far?'
'Yes, it's a--rather a rough day,' said the artist; and then, feeling that he must change the conversation, 'My friend is an Australian; he is very impulsive,' he added.
'An Australian?' said another. 'I've a brother myself in Melbourne. Does your friend come from that way at all?'
'No, not exactly,' replied the artist, whose ideas of the geography of New Holland were a little scattered. 'He lives immensely far inland, and is very rich.'