And yet he had not gone.

CHAPTER XI

A step was heard on the pavement outside; then the click of a latch-key; a step on the stairs, at the threshold, and Mr. Pilkington walked in with the air of being the master of the house and everything in it.

The little laughing mask slipped from Poppy’s face, her eyes were two sapphire crescents darting fright under down-dropped lids.  There was a look in Dicky’s face she did not care for.  But Rickman—­as Maddox had testified—­was a perfect little gentleman when he was drunk, and at the sight of Pilkington, chivalry, immortal chivalry, leapt in his heart.

He became suddenly grave, steady and coherent.

“I was just going, Miss Grace.  But—­if you want me to stay a little longer, I’ll stay.”

“You’d better go,” said Miss Grace.

Her eyes followed him sullenly as he went; so did Pilkington’s.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose that’s what you wanted?”

“Yes, but there’s no good overdoing the thing, you know.  This,” said Pilkington, “is a damned sight too expensive game for him to play.”

“He’s all right.  It wasn’t his fault.  I let him drink too much champagne.”

“What did you do that for?  Couldn’t you see he’d had enough already?”

“How was I to know?  He’s nicer when he’s drunk than other people are when they’re sober.”

He looked at her critically.  “I know all about him.  What I’d like to know is what you see in him.”

Poppy returned his look with interest.  Coarseness in Dicky Pilkington’s eyes sat brilliant and unashamed.

“Would you?  So would I. P’raps it’s wot I don’t see in him.”

Now subtlety was the last thing Dicky expected from Poppy, and it aroused suspicion.

Whatever Poppy’s instructions were she had evidently exceeded them.  Poppy read his thoughts with accuracy.

“I only did what you told me.  If you don’t like it, you can finish the job yourself.  I’m tired,” said Poppy, wearily coiling up her hair.

She was no longer in spirits.

CHAPTER XII

A tiny jet of gas made a glimmer in the fan-light of Mrs. Downey’s boarding-house next door.  Mrs. Downey kept it burning there for Mr. Rickman.

Guided by this beacon, he reached his door, escaping many dangers.  For the curbstone was a rocking precipice, and the street below it a grey and shimmering stream, that rolled, and flowed, and rolled, and never rested.  The houses, too, were so drunk as to be dangerous.  They bowed over him, swaying hideously from their foundations.  They seemed to be attracted, just as he was, by that abominable slimy flow and glister of the asphalt.  Another wriggle of the latch-key, and they would be over on the top of him.

He approached his bedroom candle with infinite precaution.  He had tried to effect a noiseless entry, but every match, as it spurted and went out, was a little fiendish spit-fire tongue betraying him.  From behind a bedroom door, ajar at the dark end of the passage, the voice of Mrs. Downey gently reminded him not to forget to turn the gas out.