sorts. I was merely reducing your argument to the
absurd, Mullins; you didn't take me literally, did you? It's no use
talking when we both seem to have made up our minds; but I'm always ready
to unmake mine if you show me that young Mr. Upton carried a pistol,
Mullins! Now I should like my breakfast, Mullins, and you must be roaring
inside for yours. The man who's been knocking up chemists all night is
the man to whom breakfast is due; get your own and then mine, and after
that you can tell me how you got on."

Anything more genial than the garrulous banter of Eugene Thrush, at his
best, it was impossible to encounter or incur; he had been, however, for a
few minutes at his worst, and it was difficult to see why the pendulum
should have swung so suddenly to the other extreme. Mullins went about
his business with his usual sleek solemnity. But Thrush was yet another
man the moment he was alone. His face was a sunny background for ideas,
misgivings, and half-formed plans, one after the other, whirling like
clouds across a crimson sky. But the sky was clear whenever Mullins was
in the room. And at the breakfast-table there was not a cloud.

"To come back to those chemists, and this shop-to-shop canvassing,"
resumed Thrush, as Mullins poured out his tea; "how many have you done,
and how many have we still to do between us?"

Mullins produced a pocket-book that did him credit, and consulted notes as
neat.

"Rung up when you were out at dinner--seventeen. Kept Cigarettes
d'Auvergne--one. That was Thornycroft's in Shaftesbury Avenue, where I'd
just been when I met you down below in the street. In the night I knocked
up other eight-and-twenty, all either in the neighbourhood of Trafalgar
Square or else on the line of the Park."

"Poor devils! I suppose you urged a pretty bad case?"

"A matter of life or death."

"Well?"

"Three more kept them, not counting Harbens: one in Knightsbridge, one in
New Bond Street, and one a little way down the Brompton Road."

"Much demand in any of those quarters?"

"Only in the Brompton Road; a literary gentleman has a box regularly every
week, and two in the autumn. Pringle, his name is."

"I know him; so he's as breathless as his own yarns, is he?" murmured
Thrush, to his buttered egg. "But has one of these apothecaries sold a
box of d'Auvergnes since Wednesday afternoon?"

"Two have," said Mullins, "but one was to Mr. Pringle."

Thrush levelled inquiring spectacles