The Safety Pin by J.S. Fletcher

While Mellapont, Shelmore, and the north country solicitor were discussing matters in the superintendent's private office at Southernstowe police station, Bartlett, all unconscious that he was one of the subjects of their debate, was comfortably eating his dinner at Portsmouth. He had gone back there with his thousand pounds in his pocket and with the highly satisfactory knowledge that from that time forward John Hackdale would send him five pounds every Friday evening. He lodged the thousand pounds in his bank, and had a little talk with the bank manager about investing his capital, now two thousand. But it was only a preliminary talk--"there was no hurry," said Bartlett: "he would consider matters and study the market lists in stocks and shares." He went to his lodgings and ordered his dinner--an unusually good one, and when it was served to him, he ate it with the appetite of a man who feels that he has thoroughly deserved the good things of life.

Dinner over, he mixed his mid--day allowance of rum, lighted his pipe, took up the newspaper, and got into his easy chair before the fire. "Life!" said Bartlett to himself, "was henceforth going to be very pleasant, blissfully comfortable." These were good lodgings; the landlady was capable and obliging; the situation quiet and respectable. He had a vision of an orderly and placid existence--as one day was, so should the next be. He would breakfast leisurely, dawdling over his eggs and bacon and the morning paper. Later, he would take his constitutional; it would end at his favourite house of call; there he would have a glass or two, and exchange political speculations with his fellow habitues of the bar parlour. He would go home to dinner at one o'clock and dine well. He would have a nap before the fire; he would wake to a dish of tea. The evening would find him at the favourite tavern again: there was good company there of an evening, and as good talk as you would find anywhere.