The Peacock of Jewels

To find Barkers Inn was much the same to an ordinary person as looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack. Dick Latimer, however, knew its exact whereabouts, because he lived there, and on this foggy November night he was making for it unerringly with the homing instinct of a bee. Leaving Fleet Street behind him, somewhere about eleven-thirty, he turned into Chancery Lane, and then struck off to the right down a by-road which narrowed to an alley, and finally ended in a cul-de-sac. Here the young man hurried through the rusty iron gates of a granite archway, and found himself in an oblong courtyard paved with cobble-stones and surrounded by tumble-down houses with steep roofs of discolored tiles. A few steps took him across this to a crooked little door, which he entered to mount a crooked little staircase, and in one minute he was on the first-floor landing, where a tiny gas-jet pricked the gloom with a bluish spot of light. Hastily using his latchkey, he admitted himself through a door on the left into a stuffy dark passage, technically called the entrance hall. Eventually entering the sitting-room, he hurled himself into a creaking basket-chair, and gave thanks to the gods of home that he had arrived.

The friend with whom Latimer shared these Barkers Inn chambers was seated by the fire clothed comfortably in a suit of shabby old flannels, reading a letter and smoking a briar-root, complacently at ease. He nodded when Dick stormed into the room, and spoke with his pipe between his teeth.

“Beastly night, isn’t it?” remarked Mr. Fuller, who had been spending the evening at home very pleasantly.

“You’d say much more than that, Alan, my boy, if you’d been out in the fog,” retorted Latimer. “Bur-r-r I’m glad to be indoors and to find you still out of bed at the eleventh hour. I’ve had adventures: official adventures.”

“Connected with your employment as a journalist, I suppose,” said Fuller in a lazy manner, and tucking the letter into his breast pocket, “but seriously speaking, Dicky, are adventures to be found in this over-civilized city?”

“Romance stalks the London streets, more or less disguised as the commonplace, my son. I can a tale unfold, but sha’n’t do so until I change my kit and have a Scotch hot on the way to my mouth. Is the water boiling?” he demanded, directing his gaze towards the old-fashioned grate where a small black kettle fumed and hissed on the hob.

“It’s been boiling for me,” said Fuller, indicating an empty tumbler at his elbow, “but I’ve enough water for your needs.”

“I only hope you’ve left enough whisky, which is far more precious. Poke up the fire and warm my slippers and make a fuss over me. I want to be fussed,” said Dick plaintively, as he retreated to his bedroom, “for I’m a poor orphan boy alone in this foggy world.”

“Ass!” observed Alan politely, and exposed the soles of his friend’s slippers to the fire, “what about supper?”

“I’ve had that,” sang out Latimer, “at someone else’s cost.”

“You must have ruined him then with your appetite,” answered Fuller, laughing; while he tilted back his chair to place his feet against the mantelpiece and his hands behind his head. In this position he smoked quietly and admired the photograph of an extremely pretty girl, which stood beside the clock, while the small black kettle sang the song of home.