“Dam—for God’s sake, let me go! I didn’t know you, old chap. I swear I didn’t. The disgrace will kill me. I’ll give you—”
“Look here, wee Fish, you offer me money again and I’ll—I’ll undress you and run away with your clothes. I will, upon my soul.”
“I shall call to this policeman,” gasped the Haddock.
“And appear with your low-class _relation_ in Court? Not you, Haddock. I’d swear you were my twin brother, and that you wouldn’t pay me the four pence you borrowed of me last week.”
And the cruel penance was inflicted to the last inch. Near the end the Haddock groaned: “Here’s Amelia Harringport—Oh! my God,” and Dam quickly turned his face unto the South and gazed at the fair land of France. He remembered that General Harringport dwelt in these parts.
At the toll-gate Dam released the perspiration-soaked wretch, who had suffered the torments of the damned, and who seemed to have met every man and woman whom he knew in the world as he paraded the promenade hanging lovingly to the arm of a common soldier! He thought of suicide and shuddered at the bare idea.
“Well, I’m awf’ly sorry to have to run away and leave you now, dear Haddock. I might have taken you to all the pubs in Folkestone if I’d had time. I might have come to your hotel and dined with you. You _will_ excuse me, won’t you? I _must_ go now. I’ve got to wash up the tea things and clean the Sergeant’s boots,” said Dam, cruelly wringing the Haddock’s agonized soft hand, and, with a complete and disconcerting change, added, “And if you breathe a word about having seen me, at Monksmead, or tell Lucille, _I’ll seek you out, my Haddock_, and—we will hold converse with thee”. Then he strode away, cursing himself for a fool, a cad, and a deteriorated, demoralized ruffian. Anyhow, the Haddock would not mention the appalling incident and give him away.
Seeking a quiet shop in a back street where he could have the long-desired meal in private, he came to a small taxidermist’s, glanced in as he passed, and beheld the pride and joy of the taxidermist’s heart—a magnificent and really well-mounted boa-constrictor, and fell shrieking, struggling, and screaming in the gutter.
That night Damocles de Warrenne, ill, incoherent, and delirious, passed in a cell, on a charge of drunk and disorderly and disgracing the Queen’s uniform.