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A deep agitation was at work in his mind. Again Chilcote's lips parted. "Loder," he said, faintly "Loder, I must I must have it. It's imperative." Once more he attempted to lift himself, but the effort was futile. Again Loder turned away. "Loder for God's sake " With a fierce gesture the other turned on him. "Good heavens! man " he began. Then unaccountably his voice changed.
The other looked up. "I think bitterly, which is worse. I am one of the unlucky beggars who, in the expectation of money, has been denied a profession even a trade, to which to cling in time of shipwreck; and who, when disaster comes, drift out to sea. I warned you the other night to steer clear of me. I come under the head of flotsam!" Chilcote's face lighted. "You came a cropper?" he asked.
At the first suggestion of reckoning upon Chilcote's lapses, his mind had drawn back in disgust; but as the thought came again the disgust had lessened. In a week two weeks, perhaps Chilcote would reclaim his place. Then would begin the routine of the affair.
He eyed his papers in Chilcote's listless hand. Chilcote smiled satirically. "Eve is very true to society," he said. "I couldn't dine at the Sabinets' if it was to make me premier. They have a butler who is an institution a sort of heirloom in the family. He is fat, and breathes audibly. Last time I lunched there he haunted me for a whole night." Blessington laughed gayly. "Mrs.
It was the excitement of to-night and the reaction." The next morning at eight o'clock, and again without breakfast, Loder covered the distance between Grosvenor Square and Clifford's Inn. He left Chilcote's house hastily with a haste that only an urgent motive could have driven him to adopt.
But what about the day? Shall we fix the day?" His voice was in control, but mentally her trivial question had disturbed and jarred him. "What day shall we say?" he repeated. "Monday in next week?" Lillian glanced up with a faint exclamation of disappointment. "How horribly faraway!" She spoke with engaging petulance, and, leaning forward afresh, drew the book from Chilcote's hand.
To sit apparently unmoved, and wait without emotion for news that might change the whole tenor of one's action, would have tried the stoicism of the most experienced; to the novice it was wellnigh unendurable. And it was under these conditions, and fighting against these odds, that he sat through the long afternoon in Chilcote's place, obeying the dictates of his chief.
As he traversed the streets he allowed himself no thought, Once, as he waited in Trafalgar Square to find a passage between the vehicles, the remembrance of Chilcote's voice coming out of the fog on their first night made itself prominent, but he rejected it quickly, guarding himself from even an involuntary glance at the place of their meeting.
"That's what I've been trying to convey. Once bitten, twice shy!" He laughed again and slipped the two rings over his finger with an air of finality. "Now, shall I start? This is the latch-key?" He drew a key from the pocket of Chilcote's evening-clothes.
Left alone in the sitting-room after Chilcote's departure, his first sensation was one of physical discomfort and unfamiliarity. His own clothes, with their worn looseness, brought no sense of friendliness such as some men find in an old garment. Lounging, and the clothes that suggested lounging, had no appeal for him.
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