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Updated: June 13, 2025
His nephew was not a young man whom he respected very highly. Spennie regarded his uncle with nervous apprehension, as one who would deal with his short-comings with vigor and severity. Sir Thomas, for his part, looked on Spennie as a youth who would get into mischief unless under his uncle's eye. "I had a telegram from him just now," Lady Julia explained. "Who is his friend?" "He doesn't say.
"Of course," he said, "that money you lost to me at picquet What was it? Ten? Twenty? Twenty pounds, wasn't it? Well, we could look on that as canceled, of course. That will be all right." Spennie exploded. "Will it?" he cried, pink to the ears. "Will it, by George? I'll pay you every frightful penny of it before the end of the week. What do you take me for, I should like to know?"
Spennie inspected the red end of his cigarette closely. "As a matter of fact, it's kind of broken off." The other's exclamation jarred on him. Rotten, having to talk about this sort of thing! "Broken off?" Spennie nodded. "Miss McEachern thought it over, don't you know," he said, "and came to the conclusion that it wasn't good enough." Now that it was said, he felt easier.
It came to Spennie after the seventh item on the program. The billiard-room struck him as admirably suitable in every way. It was not likely to be used as a sitting-out place, and it was near enough to the ball-room to enable him to hear when the music of item number nine should begin. Mr. McEachern welcomed his visitor.
When McEachern had heard that his stepson had brought home a casual London acquaintance, he had suspected the existence of hidden motives on the part of the unknown. Spennie, he had told himself, was precisely the sort of youth to whom the professional bunko-steerer would attach himself with shouts of joy.
"You mustn't spoil the play by forgetting your lines. That wouldn't do!" His eye was caught by the envelope that Spennie had dropped. A momentary lapse from the jovial and benevolent was the result. His fussy little soul abhorred small untidinesses. "Dear me," he said, stooping, "I wish people would not drop paper about the house. I cannot endure a litter."
Spennie bit his tongue and leaped three inches into the air. "Hello, Charteris!" he said gaspingly. "Spennie, my boyhood's only friend," said Charteris, "where are you off to?" "What what do you mean? I was just going upstairs." "Then don't. You're wanted. Our prompter can't be found. I want you to take his place till he blows in. Come along."
In the turmoil following the theatricals, he had been unable to get a word with any of the persons with whom he most wished to speak. He had been surprised that no announcement of the engagement had been made at the end of the performance. Spennie would be able to supply him with information as to when the announcement might be expected.
Spennie was acutely conscious of the fact that, if he could not follow up his words to Wesson with actual coin, the result would be something of an anticlimax. Somehow or other he would have to get the money and at once. The difficulty was that no one seemed at all inclined to lend it to him.
Charteris had literally gibbered in the presence of eye-witnesses at one point in the second act, when Spennie, by giving a wrong cue, had jerked the play abruptly into act three, where his colleagues, dimly suspecting something wrong, but not knowing what it was, had kept it for two minutes, to the mystification of the audience. But, now Charteris had begun to forget.
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