The Bunch of Violets | Page 3

this will be the only chance."
"True!�� agreed the blind man, rather absentmindedly. "Your last night here."
"I don't say that in any case I should not have liked to see Violet-Miss Darragh-again before I went, but I wouldn't have gone back on an arranged thing for "Now this ju-jitsu that, continued Hulse virtuously.
I look on more in the light of business."
"Rather a rough-and-tumble business one would think," suggested Carrados. "Nothing likely to drop out of your pockets in the process and get lost?"
Hulse's face displayed a rather more superior smile than he would have permitted himself had his friend been liable to see it and be snubbed thereby.
"I know what you mean, of course," he replied, getting up and going to the blind man's chair, "but don't you worry about me, Father William. Just put your hand to my breast pocket."
"Sewn up," commented Carrado?s, touching the indicated spot on his guest's jacket.
"Sewn up: that's it; and since I've had any important papers on me it always has been sewn up, no matter how often I change. No fear of anything dropping out now-or being lifted out, eh? No, sir; if what I carry there chanced to vanish, I guess no excuses would be taken and J. B. H. would automatically drop down to the very bottom of the class. As it is, if it's missing I shall be missing too, so that won't trouble me.
"What time do you want to get there?"
"Darragh's? Well, I left that open. Of course I couldn't promise until I had seen you. Anyway, not until after dinner, I said."
"That makes it quite simple, then," declared Carrados. "Stay and have dinner here, and afterwards we will go on to Darragh's together instead of going to the theatre."
"That's most terribly kind of you," replied Hulse. "But won't it be rather a pity-the tickets, I mean, and so forth?"
"There are no, tickets as it happens," said Carrados. "I left that over until to-night. And I have always wanted to meet a ju-jitsu champion. Quite providential, isn't it?
It was nearly nine o'clock, and seated in the drawingroom of his furnished house in Densham. Gardens, affecting to read an evening paper, Mr. Darragh was plainly ill at ease. The strokes of the hour, sounded by the little gilt clock on the mantelpiece, seemed to mark the limit of his patience. A muttered word escaped him and he looked up with a frown.
"It was nine that Hulse was to be here by, wasn't it, Violet?" he asked.
Miss Darragh, who had been regarding him for some time in furtive anxiety, almost jumped at the simple question.
"Oh, yes, Hugh-about nine, that is. Of course he had to-"
"Yes, yes," interrupted Darragh irritably; "we've heard all that. And Sims," he continued, more for the satisfaction of voicing his annoyance than to engage in conversation, "swore by everything that we should have that coat by eight at the, very latest. My God! what rotten tools one has to depend on!"
"Perhaps-" began Violet timidly, and stopped at his deepening scowl.
"Yes?" said Darragh, with a deadly smoothness in his voice. "Yes, Violet; pray continue. You were about to say-"
"It was really nothing, Hugh," she pleaded. "Nothing at all."
"Oh, yes, Violet, I am sure that you have some helpful little suggestion to make," he went on in the same silky, deliberate way. Even when he was silent his unspoken thoughts seemed to be lashing her with bitterness, and she turned painfully away to pick up the paper he had flung aside. "The situation, Kato," resumed Darragh, addressing himself to the third occupant of the room, "is bluntly this: If Sims isn't here with that coat be-fore young Hulse arrives, all our carefully-thought-out plan, a month's patient work, and about the last both of our cash and credit, simply go to the devil! . . . and Violet wants to say that perhaps Mr. Sims forgot to wind his watch last night or poor Mrs. Sims's cough is worse. . . . Proceed, Violet; don't be diffident."
The man addressed as "Kato" knocked a piece off the chessboard he was studying and stooped to pick it up again before, he replied. Then he looked from one to the other with a face singularly devoid of expression.
"Perhaps. Who says?" he replied in his quaintly-s ordered phrases. "If it is to be, my friend, it will be."
"Besides, Hugh," put in Violet, with a faint dash of spirit, "it isn't really quite so touch-and-go as that. If Sims comes before Hulse has left, Kato can easily slip out and change coats then."
Darragh was already on his restless way towards the door. Apparently he did not think it worth while to reply to either of the speakers, but his expression, especially when his eyes turned to Violet, was one of active contempt. As the door closed