Her Ladyship's Elephant

If a thunderbolt had shattered the floor at the Englishman's feet he could not have been more dumfounded. The one seemingly impossible thing had come to pass. In all this great world, with every chance against it, fate had ordained that the little provincial city in which he had planned to play, for one night only, another man's part, should also contain one of that man's friends, and they two had met. He was so staggered, as the possibilities contingent on this mischance crowded through his brain, that he could only stammer out:

"You have the advantage of me."

"Well, I don't much wonder," continued his new-found friend. "If I have changed as much in fifteen years as you have, it isn't strange you didn't recognise me. Lord! I'd never have known you if you hadn't told me who you were."

"You must do me as great a favour," said Scarsdale, regaining a little of his self-composure. If so long a time had elapsed since their last meeting, he felt that things were not so bad after all, and that he could reasonably hope to bluff it out.

"Well," said the other, "the boys used to call me Faro Charlie; now you remember."

The Englishman tried to look as if he did, and the American proceeded to further elucidate matters by saying:

"Why, surely you ain't forgotten me as was your pal out to Red Dog, the time you was prospecting for copper and struck gold?"

"No, no," said Scarsdale. "Of course I remember you now." He couldn't be supposed to have forgotten such an event, he felt; but the whole affair was most unfortunate.

"I guess you've settled down and become pious, from the looks of you," continued Faro Charlie; "but you'll have a drink for old times' sake just the same."

"No, thanks, you must excuse me," he replied, feeling that he must drop this unwelcome friend as soon as possible. But the friend had no intention of being dropped, and contented himself by saying:

"Rats!" and ordering two whiskies.

"Why, I've known the day," he continued, "when Slippery Dick – we used to call you Slippery Dick, you remember, 'cause you could cheat worse at poker than any man in the camp." Scarsdale writhed. "Well, as I was saying, you'd have shot a man then who refused to drink with you."

The Englishman sat aghast. Little had he thought he was impersonating a card-sharper and a wholesale murderer. The whisky came and he drank it, feeling that he needed a bracer.

"Now," said Faro Charlie, "I want to hear all about what you've been doing, first and last. Tending copper-mines, I heered, out to Michigan."

This, the Englishman felt, was going too far. It was bad enough to have to impersonate such a fellow as "Slippery Dick," but to endow him with a fictitious history that was at all comparable with Faro Charlie's account of his earlier years required too great an effort of imagination. And the fact that a quiet little man, who was sitting near by, edged up his chair and seemed deeply interested in the conversation, did not tend to put him more at his ease. No wonder, he thought, the Consul did not talk much about his brother. He therefore hastened to change the subject.

"Have you seen much of the Indians lately?" he ventured; it seemed such a safe topic.

"Thinking of that little squaw you was so chummy with down to Injun Reservation?" queried his friend, punching him jovially in the ribs. "You knew, didn't you, that they'd had her up for horse-stealing to Fort Smith? Reckon as they'd a hung her if she hadn't been a woman. She was a limb! Guess you had your hands full when you tackled her."

Scarsdale decided his choice of a subject had not been fortunate, and begged Faro Charlie to have some more whisky.

"Sure," replied that individual. "Drink with you all night."

"I'm afraid you can't do that," replied Scarsdale, hastening to rid himself of his unwelcome friend. "I have some important business to attend to this evening."

"I wish you weren't in such a rush. Come back and we'll paint the town, eh?"

Scarsdale thought it extremely unlikely, and shaking hands fled to the street with a sigh of relief; for he had had a very bad quarter of an hour. What cursed luck that he should have run across this American horror! He must avoid him at all costs to-morrow morning.

In his hurry he had not noticed that the quiet little man had left the winter garden with him. His one thought was to get away. He determined to send that telegram to Basingstoke at once, and go to bed before any one else recognised him: one of Slippery Dick's friends was enough.

But unkind fate had not yet done with him, and a new and more terrible surprise was in store for the unfortunate bridegroom. He had scarcely gone a dozen yards from the hotel entrance, when a voice said just beside him:

"Excuse me, Mr. Richard Allingford, but may I have a few words with you?"

Scarsdale turned, and finding himself face to face with the quiet little man, who had seemed so interested in his conversation of a few moments ago, said:

"I seem to be in great demand to-night. Why do you wish to see me? I don't know you."

"No," said the man who stood beside him. "No, you do not know me, Mr. Richard Allingford; but you will."

He was a quiet, unpretending little man; but there was something about his dress and bearing, and the snap with which he shut his jaw at the end of a sentence, an air of decision, in short, which caused the Englishman to feel that he would do well to conciliate this stranger, whoever he might be, so he said shortly:

"What do you want with me? Speak quickly; I'm in a hurry."

"I couldn't help overhearing some of your conversation just now at the hotel, and so I took the liberty of following you to ask you a question."

"Yes?" said Scarsdale interrogatively.

"If I mistake not you are the brother of the United States Consul at Christchurch, and came over to his wedding."

"Yes," he admitted; for he did not see how he could well deny to one man what he had just confessed to another.

"You have been in England about ten days, I think?"

"As long as that, certainly."

"May I ask what ship you came on?"

"By what right do you ask me these questions?"

"You will see presently."

"But suppose I refuse to answer them?"

The unknown shrugged his shoulders, and said quietly:

"Now wasn't it the Paris?"

"Yes," said Scarsdale, who remembered with joy having seen that fact chronicled in a London paper.

"I suppose you have never been in Winchester before?"

"Never in my life."

"Not last week?"

"Look here!" said Scarsdale angrily, "what the devil are you driving at?"

"It is a pity you should have such a good memory for past and not for recent events," said the quiet little man, "a great pity."

"I tell you I have never been here!"

"Didn't dine at the Lion's Head last Wednesday, for instance?"