"It's no use for me," he began, evidently collecting his thoughts with a strong effort, "to say your charge is preposterous. I don't suppose mere denial would convince you. I can only say, instead, that the charge is too wild to be replied to except in one way, which is this.

Employ for a moment your own standard of right and wrong. I know your love story, and you know mine. Miss Eversleigh, my cousin, is to me what Miss Goodwin is to you--true as steel. My loyalty and my friendship for you are the same as your loyalty and your friendship for me."

"Well?"

"Well, if I have spent an hour with Miss Goodwin, you have spent more than an hour with my cousin. What right have you to suspect me more than I have to suspect you? Judge me by your own standard."

"I do," I said, "and I find myself still suspecting you."

He stared.

"I don't understand you."

"Perhaps you will when you have heard the piece of news which I mentioned earlier in our conversation that I had for you."

"Well?"

"I proposed to your cousin at the Gunton-Cresswells's dance tonight, and she accepted me."

The news had a surprising effect on Julian. First he blinked. Then he craned his head forward in the manner of a deaf man listening with difficulty.

Then he left the room without a word.

He had not been gone two minutes when there were three short, sharp taps at my window.

Julian returned? Impossible. Yet who else could have called on me at that hour?

I went to the front door, and opened it.

On the steps stood the Rev. John Hatton. Beside him Sidney Price. And, lurking in the background, Tom Blake of the _Ashlade_ and _Lechton_.

_(End of James Orlebar Cloister's narrative.)_

Sidney Price's Narrative

CHAPTER 17

A GHOSTLY GATHERING

Norah Perkins is a peach, and I don't care who knows it; but, all the same, there's no need to tell her every little detail of a man's past life. Not that I've been a Don What's-his-name. Far from it. Costs a bit too much, that game. You simply can't do it on sixty quid a year, paid monthly, and that's all there is about it. Not but what I don't often think of going it a bit when things are slack at the office and my pal in the New Business Department is out for lunch. It's the loneliness makes you think of going a regular plunger. More than once, when Tommy Milner hasn't been there to talk to, I tell you I've half a mind to take out some girl or other to tea at the "Cabin." I have, straight.

Yet somehow when the a.s.sist. cash. comes round with the wicker tray on the 1st, and gives you the envelope ("Mr. Price") and you take out the five sovereigns--well, somehow, there's such a lot of other things which you don't want to buy but have just got to. Tommy Milner said the other day, and I quite agree with him, "When I took my clean handkerchief out last fortnight," he said, "I couldn't help totting up what a lot I spend on trifles." That's it. There you've got it in a nutsh.e.l.l. Washing, bootlaces, bus-tickets--trifles, in fact: that's where the coin goes. Only the other morning I bust my braces. I was late already, and pinning them together all but lost me the 9:16, only it was a bit behind time. It struck me then as I ran to the station that the average person would never count braces an expense.

Trifles--that's what it is.

No; I may have smoked a cig. too much and been so chippy next day that I had to go out and get a cup of tea at the A.B.C.; or I may now and again have gone up West of an evening for a bit of a look round; but beyond that I've never been really what you'd call vicious. Very likely it's been my friendship for Mr. Hatton that's curbed me breaking out as I've sometimes imagined myself doing when I've been alone in the New Business Room. Though I must say, in common honesty to myself, that there's always been the fear of getting the sack from the "Moon." The "Moon" isn't like some other insurance companies I could mention which'll take anyone. Your refs. must be A1, or you don't stand an earthly. Simply not an earthly. Besides, the "Moon" isn't an Insurance Company at all: it's an _As_surance Company. Of course, now I've chucked the "Moon" ("shot the moon," as Tommy Milner, who's the office comic, put it) and taken to Literature I could do pretty well what I liked, if it weren't for Norah.

Which brings me back to what I was saying just now--that I'm not sure whether I shall tell her the Past. I may and I may not. I'll have to think it over. Anyway, I'm going to write it down first and see how it looks. If it's all right it can go into my autobiography. If it isn't, then I shall lie low about it. That's the posish.

It all started from my friendship with Mr. Hatton--the Rev. Mr. Hatton.

If it hadn't have been for that man I should still be working out rates of percentage for the "Moon" and listening to Tommy Milner's so-called witticisms. Of course, I've cut him now. A literary man, a man who supplies the _Strawberry Leaf_ with two columns of Social Interludes at a salary I'm not going to mention in case Norah gets to hear of it and wants to lash out, a man whose Society novels are competed for by every publisher in London and New York--well, can a man in that position be expected to keep up with an impudent little ledger-lugger like Tommy Milner? It can't be done.

I first met the Reverend on the top of Box Hill one Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Bike had punctured, and the Reverend gave me the loan of his cyclists' repairing outfit. We had our tea together.

Watercress, bread-and-b.u.t.ter, and two sorts of jam--one bob per head. He issued an invite to his diggings in the Temple. Cocoa and cigs. of an evening. Regular pally, him and me was. Then he got into the way of taking me down to a Boys' Club that he had started.

Terrors they were, so to put it. Fair out-and-out terrors. But they all thought a lot of the Reverend, and so did I. Consequently it was all right. The next link in the chain was a chap called Cloyster.

James Orlebar Cloyster. The Reverend brought him down to teach boxing. For my own part, I don't fancy anything in the way of brutality. The club, so I thought, had got on very nicely with more intellectual pursuits: draughts, chess, bagatelle, and what-not.

But the Rev. wanted boxing, and boxing it had to be. Not that it would have done for him or me to have mixed ourselves up in it. He had his congregation to consider, and I am often on duty at the downstairs counter before the very heart of the public. A black eye or a missing tooth wouldn't have done at all for either of us, being, as we were, in a sense, officials. But Cloyster never seemed to realise this. Not to put too fine a point upon it, Cloyster was not my idea of a gentleman. He had no tact.

The next link was a confirmed dipsomaniac. A terrible phrase.

Unavoidable, though. A very evil man is Tom Blake. Yet out of evil cometh good, and it was Tom Blake, who, indirectly, stopped the boxing lessons. The club boys never wore the gloves after drunken Blake's visit.

I shall never--no, positively never forget that night in June when matters came to a head in Shaftesbury Avenue. Oh, I say, it was a bit hot--very warm.

Each successive phase is limned indelibly--that's the sort of literary style I've got, if wanted--on the tablets of my memory.

I'd been up West, and who should I run across in Oxford Street but my old friend, Charlie Cookson. Very good company is Charlie Cookson. See him at a shilling hop at the Holborn: he's pretty much all there all the time. Well-known follower--of course, purely as an amateur--of the late Dan Leno, king of comedians; good penetrating voice; writes his own in-between bits--you know what I mean: the funny observations on mothers-in-law, motors, and marriage, marked "Spoken" in the song-books. Fellows often tell him he'd make a mint of money in the halls, and there's a rumour flying round among us who knew him in the "Moon" that he was seen coming out of a Bedford Street Variety Agency the other day.

Well, I met Charlie at something after ten. Directly he spotted me he was at his antics, standing stock still on the pavement in a crouching att.i.tude, and grasping his umbrella like a tomahawk. His humour's always high-cla.s.s, but he's the sort of fellow who doesn't care a blow what he does. Chronic in that respect, absolutely. The pa.s.sers-by couldn't think what he was up to. "Whoop-whoop-whoop!" that's what he said. He did, straight. Only _yelled_ it. I thought it was going a bit too far in a public place. So, to show him, I just said "Good evening, Cookson; how are you this evening?" With all his entertaining ways he's sometimes slow at taking a hint. No tact, if you see what I mean.

In this case, for instance, he answered at the top of his voice: "Bolly Golly, yah!" and pretended to scalp me with his umbrella. I immediately ducked, and somehow knocked my bowler against his elbow. He caught it as it was falling off my head. Then he said, "Indian brave give little pale face chief his hat." This was really too much, and I felt relieved when a policeman told us to move on. Charlie said: "Come and have two penn'orth of something."

Well, we stayed chatting over our drinks (in fact, I was well into my second lemon and dash) at the Stockwood Hotel until nearly eleven. At five to, Charlie said good-bye, because he was living in, and I walked out into the Charing Cross Road, meaning to turn down Shaftesbury Avenue so as to get a breath of fresh air. Outside the Oxford there was a bit of a crowd. I asked a man standing outside a tobacconist's what the trouble was. "Says he won't go away without kissing the girl that sang 'Empire Boys,'" was the reply. "Bin shiftin' it, 'e 'as, not 'arf!" Sure enough, from the midst of the crowd came:

Yew are ther boys of the Empire, Steady an' brave an' trew.

Yew are the wuns She calls 'er sons An' I luv yew.

I had gone, out of curiosity, to the outskirts of the crowd, and before I knew what had happened I found myself close to the centre of it. A large man in dirty corduroys stood with his back to me. His shape seemed strangely familiar. Still singing, and swaying to horrible angles all over the shop, he slowly pivoted round. In a moment I recognised the bleary features of Tom Blake. At the same time he recognised me. He stretched out a long arm and seized me by the shoulder. "Oh," he sobbed, "I thought I 'ad no friend in the wide world except 'er; but now I've got yew it's orlright. Yus, yus, it's orlright." A murmur, almost a cheer it was, circulated among the crowd.

But a policeman stepped up to me.

"Now then," said the policeman, "wot's all this about?"

Yew are the wuns She calls 'er sons----

shouted Blake.

"Ho, that's yer little game, is it?" said the policeman. "Move on, d'yer hear? Pop off."

"I will," said Blake. "I'll never do it again. I promise faithful never to do it again. I've found a fren'."

"Do you know this covey?" asked the policeman.

"Deny it, if yer dare," said Blake. "Jus' you deny it, that's orl, an'