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"I am pleased to meet you," said Mellish quietly; "any friend of Hammerly's is welcome. Make yourself at home." Edging away from the two, Mellish said in a quick whisper to Sotty, the bartender: "Go and tell the doorkeeper to warn Thompson, or any of the rest of the Argus boys, that their boss is in here." At 12 o'clock that night the local editor sat in his room.
Many a time he had known Mellish to persuade a youngster with more money than brains to go home, giving orders at the double doors that he was not to be admitted again. The young man rose with a look of something like consternation on his face and followed Sotty. The thing was done quietly, and all those around the tables were too much absorbed in the game to pay much attention.
I want to have a few words with him." Sotty, who had the utmost contempt for the humanitarian feelings of his boss, said nothing, but a look of disdain swept over his florid features as he went on his mission. If he had his way, he would not throw even a sprat out of the net.
"Who is that boy?" whispered Mellish to his bartender, generally known as Sotty, an ex-prize fighter and a dangerous man to handle if it came to trouble. It rarely came to trouble there, but Sotty was, in a measure, the silent symbol of physical force, backing the well-known mild morality of Mellish. "I don't know him," answered Sotty. "Whom did he come in with?" "I didn't see him come in.
But the rest, though they were sotty, laughed lightly at him, and thus would one speak looking at another standing by: "Go to, of a truth Odysseus hath wrought good deeds without number ere now, standing foremost in wise counsels and setting battle in array, but now is this thing the best by fat that he hath wrought among the Argives, to wit, that he hath stayed this prating railer from his harangues.
"You ought to know me better than that, Greggs," he said, "do you want me to have another shot at you? I won't miss this time. Drop that." The last command was given in a ringing voice that attracted every one's attention to Sotty. He had picked up a revolver from somewhere behind the bar and had come out with it in his hand.
Hadn't noticed him till now." Mellish looked at the boy for a few minutes. He had the fresh, healthy, smooth face of a lad from the country, and he seemed strangely out of place in the heated atmosphere of that room, under the glare of the gas. Mellish sighed as he looked at him, then he turned to Sotty and said: "Just get him away quietly and bring him to the small poker room.
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