"Yes, he was!" Samson spoke, contemptuously. "Never mind where it was.
It was a place I got out of when I found out who were there."
The chauffeur came to announce that the car was ready, and they went
out. Farbish watched them with a smile that had in it a trace of the
sardonic.
The career of Farbish had been an interesting one in its own peculiar
and unadmirable fashion. With no advantages of upbringing, he had
nevertheless so cultivated the niceties of social usage that his one
flaw was a too great perfection. He was letter-perfect where one to the
manor born might have slurred some detail.
He was witty, handsome in his saturnine way, and had powerful friends
in the world of fashion and finance. That he rendered services to his
plutocratic patrons, other than the repartee of his dinner talk, was a
thing vaguely hinted in club gossip, and that these services were not
to his credit had more than once been conjectured.
When Horton had begun his crusade against various abuses, he had cast
a suspicious eye on all matters through which he could trace the trail
of William Farbish, and now, when Farbish saw Horton, he eyed him with
an enigmatical expression, half-quizzical and half-malevolent.
After Adrienne and Samson had disappeared, he rejoined his companion,
a stout, middle-aged gentleman of florid complexion, whose cheviot
cutaway and reposeful waistcoat covered a liberal embonpoint. Farbish
took his cigar from his lips, and studied its ascending smoke through
lids half-closed and thoughtful.
"Singular," he mused; "very singular!"
"What's singular?" impatiently demanded his companion. "Finish, or
don't start."
"That mountaineer came up here as George Lescott's protégé," went on
Farbish, reflectively. "He came fresh from the feud belt, and landed
promptly in the police court. Now, in less than a year, he's pairing
off with Adrienne Lescott--who, every one supposed, meant to marry
Wilfred Horton. This little party to-night is, to put it quite mildly,
a bit unconventional."
The stout gentleman said nothing, and the other questioned, musingly: "By the way, Bradburn, has the Kenmore Shooting Club requested Wilfred
Horton's resignation yet?"
"Not yet. We are going to. He's not congenial, since his hand is
raised against every man who owns more than two dollars." The speaker
owned several million times that sum. This meeting at an out-of-the-way
place had been arranged for the purpose of discussing ways and means of
curbing Wilfred's crusades.
"Well, don't do it."
"Why the devil shouldn't we? We don't want anarchists in the Kenmore."