United States or Lesotho ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I observed by a curious shade which passed over Senator Wrengold's face that he quite misapprehended my brother-in-law's meaning. Charles wished to convey, of course, that Mr. Coleyard belonged to a mere literary and Bohemian set in London, while he himself moved on a more exalted plane of peers and politicians.
Voices came to us from within; one was Césarine's, the other had a ring that reminded me at once of Medhurst and the Seer, of Elihu Quackenboss and Algernon Coleyard. They were talking together in French; and now and then we caught the sound of stifled laughter. We opened the door. "Est-il drôle, donc, ce vieux?" the man's voice was saying. "C'est
There's a telegram come in on the tape to-night saying Algernon Coleyard is dangerously ill at his home in England." Charles gasped a violent gasp. "Colonel Clay!" he shouted, aloud. "And once more he's done me. There's not a moment to lose. After him, gentlemen! after him!" Never before in our lives had we had such a close shave of catching and fixing the redoubtable swindler.
Frank Beddersley, of London, was the best exponent of the Bertillon system now living in England; and to Beddersley I shall go. Or, rather, I'll invite him here to lunch to-morrow." "Who told you of him?" I inquired. "Not Dr. Quackenboss, I hope; nor yet Mr. Algernon Coleyard?" Charles paused and reflected. "No, neither of them," he answered, after a short internal deliberation.
Césarine flung herself upon him with wild devotion. "Oh, Paul, darling," she cried, in English, "I will not, I will not! I will never save myself at your expense. If they send you to prison Paul, Paul, I will go with you!" I remembered as she spoke what Mr. Algernon Coleyard had said to us at the Senator's. "Even the worst of rogues have always some good in them.
Only Algernon Coleyard sat brooding and silent, with his chin on one hand, and his brow intent, musing and gazing at the embers in the fireplace. The hand, by the way, was remarkable for a curious, antique-looking ring, apparently of Egyptian or Etruscan workmanship, with a projecting gem of several large facets. Once only, in the midst of a game of whist, he broke out with a single comment.
Algernon Coleyard, the famous poet, and leader of the Briar-rose school of West-country fiction. "You know him in London, of course?" he observed to Charles, with a smile, as we waited dinner for our guests. "No," Charles answered stolidly. "I have not had that honour. We move, you see, in different circles."
It turned out afterwards that Wrengold proposed that particular game because he had heard Coleyard observe at the Lotus Club the same afternoon that it was a favourite amusement of his. Now, however, for a while he objected to playing.
His luck beats mine. I retire from the game, Senator." Just at that moment a servant entered, bearing a salver, with a small note in an envelope. "For Mr. Coleyard," he observed; "and the messenger said, urgent." Coleyard tore it open hurriedly. I could see he was agitated. His face grew white at once. "I I beg your pardon," he said. "I I must go back instantly.
But the Senator, better accustomed to the new-rich point of view, understood Charles to mean that he had not the entrée of that distinguished coterie in which Mr. Coleyard posed as a shining luminary. Which naturally made him rate even higher than before his literary acquisition. At two minutes past the hour the poet entered.
Word Of The Day