"This is an unexpected pleasure, Duke," I remarked smilingly. He regarded me for a few minutes coldly.
"Who the devil are you, and who’s that old —— sitting there?"—indicating Mrs. Grundy. Then without waiting for a reply, he continued: "I know you now: you’re the feller that said that dashed impertinent thing about my being the Duke of Shares."
"I had the honour, Duke, of immortalising Your Grace in epigram. Wherever the English language is——"
"Then be damned to you, sir," was the angry response.
"We were not expecting Your Grace yet," interposed Mrs. Grundy; I was astonished at the unctuous tones she adopted in speaking to the Duke.
"No, nor I, confound it! I’ve just been knocked down by a taxicab, light green, driver had red hair, couldn’t see his number."
"I am extremely sorry," croaked Mrs. Grundy in what she evidently intended to be ingratiating tones. "Will not Your Grace take a seat."
"No, I won’t!" the Duke tossed his head indignantly. "Draughty hole—damn it, sir, what are you grinning at?"
The remark was directed at me. The little man made a dive in my direction, and in stepping back to avoid him I knocked my head violently against what appeared to be the mantel-piece, although I had been sitting several yards from it.
"What is it?" I looked about dazed. Two policemen were bending over me, and behind them was a sea of interested faces that looked very pale, I was out of doors, apparently sitting on the pavement, with my head propped up upon a policeman’s knee.
"It was a banana skin, sir," responded one of the policemen, holding up something before my eyes—(how the police love an "exhibit")—"you ’urt your ’ead, sir, but you’re all right now."
"And Mrs. Grundy and the Duke?" I queried.
"It’s a bad business, I’m afraid ’e’ll——"
Then my mind trailed off into darkness and my body was trundled off to St. George’s Hospital, from which the almost tearful Rogers later fetched me in a taxi, bemoaning the narrowness, not of my escape from death, but his own from destitution.
"I wonder wot ’Earty ’ud think o’ that little yarn," Bindle remarked meditatively as he tapped the table before him with his mallet in token of applause. As chairman Bindle modelled himself upon him who lords it over the public-house "smoker." "’E wouldn’t like to ’ave to give up ’is ’arp with angels flapping about."