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Updated: September 11, 2025
Pleasant fellow, Hargate," he added, as the footsteps retreated down, the passage. "Well, my lad, what's the matter with you? You look depressed." Lord Dreever flung himself on to the lounge, and groaned hollowly. "Damn! Damn!! Damn!!!" he observed. His glassy eye met Jimmy's, and wandered away again. "What on earth's the matter?" demanded Jimmy.
Frank Hargate was an only son. His mother lived in a tiny cottage on the outskirts of Deal. She was a widow, her husband, Captain Hargate, having died a year before. She had only her pension as an officer's widow, a pittance that scarce sufficed even for the modest wants of herself, Frank, and her little daughter Lucy, now six years old.
Hargate had not yet been compelled to sprain his wrist, having adopted the alternative of merely refusing invitations to play billiards. "Hello, Hargate," said his lordship. "Isn't it coming down, by Jove!" Hargate glanced up, nodded without speaking, and turned his attention to the cards once more.
Hargate nodded, and obediently put down the deck. "Look here." said Lord Dreever, "this is boring me stiff. Let's have a game of something. Anything to pass away the time. Curse this rain! We shall be cooped up here till dinner at this rate. Ever played picquet? I could teach it you in five minutes."
But what of it? He had the money. He slipped it into his waistcoat-pocket. He would take it down with him, and pay Hargate directly after dinner. He left the room. The flutter of a skirt caught his eye as he reached the landing. A girl was coming down the corridor on the other side. He waited at the head of the stairs to let her go down before him.
"Jolly everything smells after the rain," said Hargate, who seemed to have struck a conversational patch. "Freshened everything up." His lordship did not appear to have noticed it. He seemed to be thinking of something else. His air was pensive and abstracted. "There's just time," said Hargate, looking at his watch again, "for a short stroll. I want to have a talk with you."
For an hour Frank lay sobbing on the sofa, and then, remembering the doctor's last words, he knelt beside it and prayed for strength. A week had passed. The blinds were up again. Mrs. Hargate had been laid in her last home, and Frank was sitting alone again in the little parlor thinking over what had best be done.
The son of a hundred earls was pale, and his eyes were markedly fish-like. "A fellow I've got stopping with me taking him down to Dreever with me to-day man I met at the club fellow named Hargate. Don't know if you know him? No?
He had appeared at dinner that night, a short, wooden-faced man, with no more conversation than Hargate. Jimmy had paid little attention to the newcomer. "What about him?" he said. "He's a sleut', boss." "A what?" "A sleut'." "A detective?" "Dat's right. A fly cop." "What makes you think that?" "T'ink! Why, I can tell dem by deir eyes an' deir feet, an' de whole of dem.
He was a little disposed to be noisy, and to bluster in his show of authority, and therefore fell all the more easily captive to his wife, who had a gift for the tranquil saying of unpleasant things which was reckoned quite phenomenal in Beacon Hargate. This formidable woman was ruled in turn by her daughter Bertha.
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