Free The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris by Leon Garfield

love-in-idleness. Maggie Hemp had stitched it for him during a lull in the first weeks of their passion and had woven her name into the design.
    Sunday walkers, crossing his path, glancedcuriously at him, but he returned a look of dignified aloofness and glided on. In his own way, Ralph Bunnion was something of a hero. Though he knew Major Alexander’s accusation to be false and the challenge therefore unjust, he scorned to say so, partly because he knew he wouldn’t be believed and partly because the notion of a duel was grandly romantic.
    A great many noble and even tragic ideas thronged his brain and he tended to look on the passing landscape as bidding its last farewell to the gay and dashing Ralph. Already he’d determined, if he should fall, that he would bequeath his collection of waistcoats to Frederick.
    Frederick was the friend he was meeting, and it was he who owned the pair of dueling pistols. Ralph would certainly have preferred swords, but in the end it turned out that he didn’t know anybody who had a pair and it seemed undignified to hire them. So pistols it was to be, with Frederick as his second.
    Or one of his seconds. Ralph frowned. His father had gone and saddled him with that sly, sour fellow Brett as the other. Ralph disliked Mr. Brett, and it was humiliating to be seconded by him. But there was no help for it now. Brett was to fix up about the surgeon, and there again his father had interfered. Sometimes Ralph wondered who it was who was supposed to be fighting the duel. His father insisted on having Dr. Harris, whose brat was at the school. He fancied this might keep things in the family, as itwere, and prevent them from getting out all over the town.
    An expression of melancholy contempt came over Ralph’s face. What good could even Dr. Harris do when the glorious Ralph lay quiet and still with only his red blood moving, moving away from a hole in his breast?
    Ralph’s heart beat rapidly. Why did he always think of himself as being dead? Was it an omen? “What will be, will be,” he whispered philosophically, and entered the Old Ship Inn.
    There were few people in the dim back parlor where Ralph and his friends delighted to hold court and sing and drink the night into day, but good old Frederick was among them. He was thinner than Ralph and would need to fill out before the waistcoats would fit him. Ralph shivered as once again his thoughts implied his own death.
    â€œArternoon, Mister Ralph, sir,” said the landlord affably. “Pint of the usual?”
    â€œHalf,” said Ralph quietly. “Just a half, landlord.”
    â€œNight on the tiles, eh?” chuckled the landlord. Then, observing Ralph’s savaged face, he guffawed loudly as the full extent of his own wit reached him. “He—he! I sees you been tom-catting again! Lord, Mister Ralph, you’ll have the town on your tail afore long!”
    Though privately the landlord detested Ralph Bunnion and his gaudy friends, they were entitled to his courtesy as they drank well and kept the parlor from being lonely. Ralph smiled feebly at the landlord’stribute, then joined the negligent Frederick at a table by the fireplace.
    â€œRattlin’ fine mess your face is in, old sport,” said Frederick, yawning sympathetically. “Tell us all. Your uncle Fred’s all ears.” This last was not entirely a figure of speech. He did have rather large ears—or else a very small face—and they stuck out from under his wig like loosened coach wheels. Otherwise he was presentable enough, being the son of a successful livery-stable owner.
    â€œFred,” said Ralph with a seriousness that caused his friend to abandon his smile. “I need your pistols—”
    Suddenly Ralph stopped. He had become aware of a stranger watching him. He frowned, and the stranger’s innocent eyes seemed to drift away under pressure of his own. This stranger was a stoutish, plainly