Algy's remarks, coming on top of the Wally Mason episode, had shaken him. The London in which he and Derek moved and had their being is nothing but a village, and it was evident that village gossip was hostile to Derek. People were talking about him. Local opinion had decided that he had behaved badly. Already one man had cut him.

Freddie blenched at a sudden vision of streetfuls of men, long Piccadillys of men, all cutting him, one after the other. Something had got to be done.

The subject was not an easy one to broach to his somewhat forbidding friend, as he discovered when the latter arrived about half an hour later. Derek had been attending the semi-annual banquet of the Worshipful Dry-Salters Company down in the City, understudying one of the speakers, a leading member of Parliament, who had been unable to appear; and he was still in the grip of that feeling of degraded repletion which City dinners induce.

Yet, unfavourably disposed as, judging by his silence and the occasional moody grunts he uttered, he appeared to be to a discussion of his private affairs, it seemed to Freddie impossible that the night should be allowed to pa.s.s without some word spoken on the subject. He thought of Ronny and what Ronny had said, of Algy and what Algy had said, of Wally Mason and how Wally had behaved in this very room; and he nerved himself to the task.

"Derek, old top."

A grunt.

"I say, Derek, old bean."

Derek roused himself, and looked gloomily across the room to where he stood, warming his legs at the blaze.

"Well?"

Freddie found a difficulty in selecting words. A ticklish business, this. One that might well have disconcerted a diplomat. Freddie was no diplomat, and the fact enabled him to find a way in the present crisis. Equipped by nature with an amiable tactlessness and a happy gift of blundering, he charged straight at the main point, and landed on it like a circus elephant alighting on a bottle.

"I say, you know, about Jill!"

He stooped to rub the backs of his legs, on which the fire was playing with a little too fierce a glow, and missed his companion's start and the sudden thickening of his bushy eyebrows.

"Well?" said Derek again.

Freddie nerved himself to proceed. A thought flashed across his mind that Derek was looking exactly like Lady Underhill. It was the first time he had seen the family resemblance quite so marked.

"Ronny Devereux was saying...." faltered Freddie.

"d.a.m.n Ronny Devereux!"

"Oh, absolutely! But...."

"Ronny Devereux! Who the devil _is_ Ronny Devereux?"

"Why, old man, you've heard me speak of him, haven't you? Pal of mine.

He came down to the station with Algy and me to meet your mater that morning."

"Oh, _that_ fellow? And he has been saying something about...?"

"It isn't only Ronny, you know," Freddie hastened to interject. "Algy Martyn's talking about it, too. And lots of other fellows. And Algy's sister and a lot of peoples They're all saying...."

"What are they saying?"

Freddie bent down and chafed the back of his legs. He simply couldn't look at Derek while he had that Lady Underhill expression on the old map. Rummy he had never noticed before how extraordinarily like his mother he was. Freddie was conscious of a faint sense of grievance. He could not have put it into words, but what he felt was that a fellow had no right to go about looking like Lady Underhill.

"What are they saying?" repeated Derek grimly.

"Well...." Freddie hesitated. "That it's a bit tough.... On Jill, you know."

"They think I behaved badly?"

"Well.... Oh, well, you know!"

Derek smiled a ghastly smile. This was not wholly due to mental disturbance. The dull heaviness which was the legacy of the Dry-Salters' dinner had begun to change to something more actively unpleasant. A sub-motive of sharp pain had begun to run through it, flashing in and out like lightning through a thunder-cloud. He felt sullen and vicious.

"I wonder," he said with savage politeness, "if, when you chat with your friends, you would mind choosing some other topic than my private affairs."

"Sorry, old man. But they started it, you know."

"And, if you feel you've got to discuss me, kindly keep it to yourself. Don't come and tell me what your d.a.m.ned friends said to each other and to you and what you said to them, because it bores me. I'm not interested. I don't value their opinions as much as you seem to."

Derek paused, to battle in silence with the imperious agony within him. "It was good of you to put me up here," he went on, "but I think I won't trespa.s.s on your hospitality any longer. Perhaps you'll ask Barker to pack my things to-morrow." Derek moved, as majestically as an ex-guest of the Worshipful Company of Dry-Salters may, in the direction of the door. "I shall go to the Savoy."

"Oh, I say, old man! No need to do that."

"Good night."

"But, I say...."

"And you can tell your friend Devereux that, if he doesn't stop poking his nose into my private business, I'll pull it off."

"Well," said Freddie doubtfully, "of course I don't suppose you know, but.... Ronny's a pretty hefty bird. He boxed for Cambridge in the light-weights the last year he was up, you know. He...."

Derek slammed the door. Freddie was alone. He stood rubbing his legs for some minutes, a rueful expression on his usually cheerful face.

Freddie hated rows. He liked everything to jog along smoothly. What a rotten place the world was these days! Just one thing after another.

First, poor old Jill takes the knock and disappears. He would miss her badly. What a good sort! What a pal! And now--gone. Biffed off.

Next, Derek. Together, more or less, ever since Winchester, and now--bing!...

Freddie heaved a sigh, and reached out for the _Sporting Times_, his never-failing comfort in times of depression. He lit another cigar and curled up in one of the arm-chairs. He was feeling tired. He had been playing squash all the afternoon, a game at which he was exceedingly expert and to which he was much addicted.

Time pa.s.sed. The paper slipped to the floor. A cold cigar followed it.

From the depths of the chair came a faint snore....

A hand on his shoulder brought Freddie with a jerk from troubled dreams. Derek was standing beside him. A bent, tousled Derek, apparently in pain.

"Freddie!"

"Hullo!"

A spasm twisted Derek's face.

"Have you got any pepsin?"

Derek uttered a groan. What a mocker of our petty human dignity is this dyspepsia, bringing low the haughtiest of us, less than love itself a respecter of persons. This was a different Derek from the man who had stalked stiffly from the room two hours before. His pride had been humbled upon the rack.

"Pepsin?"

"Yes. I've got the most d.a.m.ned attack of indigestion."