CHAPTER III.

Ainsworth shook his billiard-cue with unmistakable emphasis in the stranger's face.

"Get out," he cried irascibly. "You're drunk, and I don't want to talk to you!" He pushed his annoyer rudely away, but the latter returned to the attack, whereupon Bertrand Trascott intervened.

"Have patience, Cyril," he begged. "The man evidently has a reason for his persistence. Now, sir, what is it? We would like to go on with our game."

The stranger who had circled in to the corner-table in the billiard-room of the great hotel and stopped their play presented an uninviting and ludicrous appearance.

His head and shoulders reminded Trascott of those of a dissipated Austrian virtuoso whom he knew well and whose brilliance had become very spasmodic on account of relapses to the same vice which apparently ruled the stranger. The resemblance was quite close, embodying the uncontrolled, tremulous chin and lips surmounted by a fiercely-curled wisp of moustache, the hawked nose, narrowed eyes and prominent, bony cheeks, with a pair of puttied ears sprouting from his hair like old mushrooms in the grass, while a pinched, sunken neck failed to fill his peaked shoulders.

Trascott thought that if both the Austrian virtuoso and the portly butler who had come to be looked on as an institution at Britton Hall were cut in two, and the upper half of the virtuoso pieced to the lower, corpulent section of the Honorable Oliver's servant the result would be the prototype of the stranger who had undertaken to tack among the billiard-tables.

"What do you want?" he asked the man, with more severity.

The questioned one surveyed Trascott for a space, recognized his curate's cloth and decided he had no business with him, for his eyes flashed aggressively upon the lawyer, who was again preparing for the execution of the stroke that the man had spoiled.

Ainsworth's back was turned, so the intruder jogged his right elbow for attention with the result that the lawyer's ball, deflected at right angles, leaped across the next table and spread confusion among a group of Frenchmen playing there.

This second interruption of the stringing of a long break and the titter of idle observers, combined with the French stares of contempt, was not at all conducive to the regaining of Ainsworth's equanimity.

"By gad, sir, get out of here," he admonished, "or I'll very soon have the concierge throw you out!"

"You?" asked the stranger, with a belligerent glare.

"Exactly!" Ainsworth answered emphatically. He looked as if he would quite gladly exempt the concierge from consideration and perform the operation himself.

Trascott had been roaming the room in search of an hotel servant who could lead this obstinate fellow away; there being none about, however, he compromised on a marker and returned to the intruder.

He still concentrated his attention on the lawyer with that same belligerent glare, though in his eyes a rising flicker of apprehension betrayed the inward reflection that he had somehow caught a Tartar in this smooth-faced, perfectly-fed man with coat off and billiard-cue in hand.

"You're Britton?" he inquired in a thick, heavy voice.

"I'm nothing of the sort," the irate lawyer returned.

The stranger took a step nearer and leaned his hip against the billiard-table.

"You deny it?" he snarled vindictively. "The assistant concierge informed me that you were Britton."

Ainsworth flourished the cue in his hand suggestively.

"Then the assistant concierge is an ass, like yourself," he said. "There are two of you, and this hotel is no place for such a team."

Trascott pushed forward the marker he had procured.

"Come, monsieur," said the marker. "I think there are better places than this for you."

The stranger whirled and savagely struck away the persuading fingers with which the polite Frenchman had grasped his arm.

"Look out for yourself," he stormed, "or I'll have the manager pack you off to-morrow, my fine fellow. Let me tell you that you can't turn men of my standing into the street. I have engaged rooms and paid for them in advance, and I'll go where I d-d please in this hotel-and do what I please also!"

"No, you won't, my friend," warned Ainsworth, tapping him on the shoulder with quiet determination. "You won't come in here twice to insult me and interrupt my play. Just keep that in your muddled mind!"

"I was informed that you were a certain Britton I was searching for," said the other bluntly, in the spirit of rude apology.

"Do I look like Britton?" cried the lawyer, testily. "I stand five feet six, while Britton stands six feet one. I weigh one hundred and fifty pounds; Britton weighs two hundred and ten. Britton dances in the ballroom with the ladies and brings them ices, but I play billiards with a curate. I ask you again, do I resemble him? No, you say. And I'll tell you something else, too! Britton wouldn't have suffered your impudence for this length of time. He's a quick-blooded beggar, and he'd have jolly well twisted your neck by now."

"Will you come out, sir?" begged the marker, making a second attempt, at the importunations of Trascott.

The stranger eyed him and raised a hand as if to strike, then diverted the hand to his waistcoat pocket and threw his card on the table.

"Take that card to the manager as my complaint, and tell him to dismiss you," he said, somewhat haughtily. "I'm Christopher Morris, promoter of the Yukon Dredging Company."

The servant took the pasteboard, a little awed. Ainsworth had not caught the stranger's surname, but he snapped at the mention of his especial enterprise.

"The Yukon Dredging Company!" he exclaimed suspiciously. "If you are the promoter of that scheme, I warn you to watch out for me. I'm Ainsworth, the law-machine, and I'm convinced that the Dredging Company is a mere swindle. Be careful! I'll put the Crown after you at the very first opportunity."

The object of his censure sniffed in scorn, but Ainsworth continued:

"You invited my antagonism. Now perhaps you'll regret it. If anything angers me, it is the loss of my self-respect, and those Frenchmen took me for an idiot. But you sound decidedly out of place next the Sahara, my friend. You should be at the Arctic end of a different continent. What are you hunting in Algiers-floating capital?"

"No," was the answer. "I am hunting my wife. I arrived but an hour ago from Tangier, where the cursed doctors quarantined me for a chill which they insisted on calling fever. When after twenty days' hammering at their thick heads I convinced them of their mistake, they let me out, and I found my wife had hurried away to escape infection." He laughed, and with a cold, indignant significance intensifying his words, repeated: "Hurried away to escape infection!"

"Your wife," echoed the puzzled lawyer. "What has that to do with your offensive attitude? What has that to do with Rex Britton?"

"They tell me that in finding Britton I shall find my wife!"

Understanding rushed upon Ainsworth, and he, as well as Trascott, was stirred to fiery excitement. He shook the man roughly by the shoulder. "Your name?" he breathlessly demanded. "What did you say was your name?"

"Morris-Christopher Morris," was the answer. "My wife's name is Maud, and the devil gave her the prettiest face in England."

Ainsworth passed his hand across his forehead. His face held the first expression of dismay that the curate had ever seen there. To Trascott it was evident that the lawyer's unconcealed mistrust of the woman concerned had not extended to such an unforeseen contingency as now existed upon the statement of Morris.

The barrister was not looking at the curate and could not see the accompanying signs of extreme agitation in the latter's countenance. The former seemed to be weighing a doubtful point in his mind, and when he spoke it was as to himself in a musing, philosophical manner.

"This is either a drunken hallucination, insanity, or the truth," he said, softly. "Let us have a test!" He dropped a vesta match upon the green baize of the table.

"Pick that up," he said to Morris.

The man stared an instant and obeyed. Ainsworth watched him closely. His fingers went down with disconcerting steadiness, closed unerringly over the match and returned it to the barrister. The latter raised appealing eyes to his friend and said:

"He drinks, but he is not overly drunk now. I'm afraid it is the truth."

Trascott, his earnest face all troubled and his lips compressed in a grim line, shook his head.

"This is something like what I feared," he groaned.