It was known to some few that he occupied rooms in a flat at Westminster,--but to very few exactly where the rooms were situate.Among all his friends no one was known to have entered them.In a moderate way he was given to hospitality,--that is to infrequent but when the occasion came, to graceful hospitality.Some club, however, or tavern perhaps, in the summer, some river bank would be chosen as the scene of these festivities.To a few,--if, as suggested, amidst summer flowers on the water's edge to men and women mixed,--he would be a courtly and efficient host; for he had the rare gift of doing such things well.
Hunting was over, and the east wind was still blowing, and a great portion of the London world was out of town taking its Easter holiday, when on an unpleasant morning, Ferdinand Lopez travelled into the city by the Metropolitan railway from Westminster Bridge.It was his custom to go thither when he did go,--not daily like a man of business, but as chance might require, like a capitalist or a man of pleasure,--in his own brougham.But on this occasion he walked down the river side, and then walked from the Mansion House into a dingy little court called Little Tankard Yard, near the Bank of England, and going through a narrow dark long passage got into a little office at the back of a building, in which there sat at a desk a greasy gentleman with a new hat on one side of his head, who might perhaps be about forty years old.The place was very dark, and the man was turning over the leaves of a ledger.A stranger to city ways might probably have said that he was idle, but he was no doubt filling his mind with that erudition which would enable him to earn his bread.On the other side of the desk there was a little boy copying letters.These were Mr Sextus Parker,--commonly called Sexty Parker,--his clerk.Mr Parker was a gentleman very well known and at the present moment favourably esteemed on the Stock Exchange.'What, Lopez!' said he.
'Uncommon glad to see you.What can I do for you?'
'Just come inside,--will you?' said Lopez.Now within Mr Parker's very small office there was a smaller office, in which there were a safe, a small rickety Pembroke table, two chairs, and an old washing-stand with a tumbled towel.Lopez led the way into this sanctum as though he knew the place well, and Sexty Parker followed him.
'Beastly day, isn't it?' said Sexty.
'Yes,--a nasty east wind.'
'Cutting one in two, with a hot sun at the same time.One ought to hybernate at this time of the year.'
'Then why don't you hybernate?' said Lopez.
'Business is too good.That's about it.A man has to stick to it when it does come.Everybody can't do like you;--give up regular work, and make a better thing of an hour now and an hour then, just as it pleases you.I shouldn't dare go in for that kind of thing.
'I don't suppose you or any one else know what I go in for,' said Lopez, with a look that indicated offence.