A longing seized him to throw his arm round the Buccaneer, and say,
"Come, old boy. Time cures all. Let's go and drink it off!"
But a voice yelled at him, and he started back. A cab rolled out of
blackness, and into blackness disappeared. And suddenly George perceived
that he had lost Bosinney. He ran forward and back, felt his heart
clutched by a sickening fear, the dark fear which lives in the wings
of the fog. Perspiration started out on his brow. He stood quite still,
listening with all his might.
"And then," as he confided to Dartie the same evening in the course of a
game of billiards at the Red Pottle, "I lost him."
Dartie twirled complacently at his dark moustache. He had just put
together a neat break of twenty-three,--failing at a 'Jenny.' "And who
was she?" he asked.
George looked slowly at the 'man of the world's' fattish, sallow face,
and a little grim smile lurked about the curves of his cheeks and his
heavy-lidded eyes.
'No, no, my fine fellow,' he thought, 'I'm not going to tell you.' For
though he mixed with Dartie a good deal, he thought him a bit of a cad.
"Oh, some little love-lady or other," he said, and chalked his cue.
"A love-lady!" exclaimed Dartie--he used a more figurative expression.
"I made sure it was our friend Soa...."
"Did you?" said George curtly. "Then damme you've made an error."
He missed his shot. He was careful not to allude to the subject again
till, towards eleven o'clock, having, in his poetic phraseology, 'looked
upon the drink when it was yellow,' he drew aside the blind, and gazed
out into the street. The murky blackness of the fog was but faintly
broken by the lamps of the 'Red Pottle,' and no shape of mortal man or
thing was in sight.
"I can't help thinking of that poor Buccaneer," he said. "He may be
wandering out there now in that fog. If he's not a corpse," he added
with strange dejection.
"Corpse!" said Dartie, in whom the recollection of his defeat at
Richmond flared up. "He's all right. Ten to one if he wasn't tight!"
George turned on him, looking really formidable, with a sort of savage
gloom on his big face.
"Dry up!" he said. "Don't I tell you he's 'taken the knock!"'