There were also moral remarks and other irrelevant
contributions. There were conflicting ideas of telling the police
and pursuing the flying couple on a horse. That made ten minutes.
Then Stephen, the waiter, who had shown Hoopdriver up, came down
and lit wonderful lights and started quite a fresh discussion by
the simple question "WHICH?" That turned ten minutes into a
quarter of an hour. And in the midst of this discussion, making a
sudden and awestricken silence, appeared Bechamel in the hall
beyond the bar, walked with a resolute air to the foot of the
staircase, and passed out of sight. You conceive the backward
pitch of that exceptionally shaped cranium? Incredulous eyes
stared into one another's in the bar, as his paces, muffled by
the stair carpet, went up to the landing, turned, reached the
passage and walked into the dining-room overhead.
"It wasn't that one at all, miss," said the ostler,"I'd SWEAR"
"Well, that's Mr. Beaumont," said the barmaid, "--anyhow."
Their conversation hung comatose in the air, switched up by
Bechamel. They listened together. His feet stopped. Turned. Went
out of the diningroom. Down the passage to the bedroom. Stopped
again.
"Poor chap!" said the barmaid. "She's a wicked woman!"
"Sssh!" said Stephen.
After a pause Bechamel went back to the dining-room. They heard a
chair creak under him. Interlude of conversational eyebrows.
"I'm going up," said Stephen, "to break the melancholy news to
him."
Bechamel looked up from a week-old newspaper as, without
knocking, Stephen entered.
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