It was only by the exercise of superhuman
address that the Captain had extricated himself from that perplexing
predicament at the Belgian watering-place; and it may be that the
unpleasant experiences of that particular evening were not without a
salutary effect upon the adventurer's future plans.
"It was touch-and-go work, Val," he said to his companion; "and if I
hadn't carried matters with a high hand, and sprung my position as an
officer in the English service upon those French ruffians, I don't know
where it would have ended."
"It might have come to a metallic ornamentation of the ankle, and some
amiable 444, who has murdered his grandmother with a red-hot poker and
extenuating circumstances, for your companion," murmured Valentine. "I
wouldn't try it on with that supererogatory king again on this side of
the Channel, if I were you."
The Captain bestowed a freezing look on his flippant _protege_ and then
commenced a very grave discussion of future ways and means, which ended
in an immediate departure for Paris, where the two men entered upon an
unpretentious career in the commercial line as agents and travellers
for the patentees of an improved kind of gutta percha, which material
was supposed to be applicable to every imaginable purpose, from the
sole of an infant's boot to the roof of a cathedral.
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