Mr. Quest had a very good dinner, and contrary to his custom drank the best part of a bottle of old port after it.  He had an unpleasant business to face that evening, and felt as though his nerves required bracing.  About ten o’clock he took his leave, and getting into a hansom bade the cabman drive to Rupert Street, Pimlico, where he arrived in due course.  Having dismissed his cab, he walked slowly down the street till he reached a small house with red pillars to the doorway.  Here he rang the bell.  The door was opened by a middle-aged woman with a cunning face and a simper.  Mr. Quest knew her well.  Nominally the Tiger’s servant, she was really her jackal.

“Is Mrs. d’Aubigne at home, Ellen?” he said.

“No, sir,” she answered with a simper, “but she will be back from the music hall before long.  She does not appear in the second part.  But please come in, sir, you are quite a stranger here, and I am sure that Mrs. d’Aubigne will be very glad to see you, for she have been dreadfully pressed for money of late, poor dear; nobody knows the trouble that I have had with those sharks of tradesmen.”

By this time they were upstairs in the drawing-room, and Ellen had turned the gas up.  The room was well furnished in a certain gaudy style, which included a good deal of gilt and plate glass.  Evidently, however, it had not been tidied since the Tiger had left it, for there on the table were cards thrown this way and that amidst an array of empty soda-water bottles, glasses with dregs of brandy in them, and other debris, such as the ends of cigars and cigarettes, and a little copper and silver money.  On the sofa, too, lay a gorgeous tea gown resplendent with pink satin, also a pair of gold embroidered slippers, not over small, and an odd gant de Suede, with such an extraordinary number of buttons that it almost looked like the cast-off skin of a brown snake.

“I see that your mistress has been having company, Ellen,” he said coldly.

“Yes, sir, just a few lady friends to cheer her up a bit,” answered the woman, with her abominable simper; “poor dear, she do get that low with you away so much, and no wonder; and then all these money troubles, and she night by night working hard for her living at the music hall.  Often and often have I seen her crying over it all——­”

“Ah,” said he, breaking in upon her eloquence, “I suppose that the lady friends smoke cigars.  Well, clear away this mess and leave me—­ stop, give me a brandy-and-soda first.  I will wait for your mistress.”

The woman stopped talking and did as she was bid, for there was a look in Mr. Quest’s eye which she did not quite like.  So having placed the brandy-and-soda-water before him she left him to his own reflections.