Cleek found his cigar at last, and rose with it in his hand, leaving young Barch to finish his story in his own inimitable way.

“Yes,” he continued, “what I call a regular facer for me. I was swindled into going away by a forged letter, which I swear he wrote himself. Recollect, don’t you, that when you came to meet me at the ruin, I told you I’d suddenly been called away? Well, so I had. While I was waiting there at the ruin for you to get shot of that muff Geoff Clavering and come to join me, up walks the pater and hands me a letter a typewritten letter, mark you with word that a messenger had just brought it. Now listen to this closely, Barch! Last January some fool of an editor suggested to my pater that he should write a series of articles upon the proper cultivation of hot-house fruits for his tomfool paper, and said that typewritten copy was absolutely necessary. Out goes the pater and buys a typewriter, and engages a girl to operate it. Got her from some typewriting school in town, and a rippin’ fine little girl she was, too! Name, Katie Walters. Pretty as a picture and lively as a cricket. Well, Katie and I became jolly good pals. Pater found it out, and then just what you might have expected happened. I got a lecture, and Katie got the sack and was packed off to town before I could get a private word with her. Now, the letter my father handed me this afternoon was supposed to come from that girl.”

“And didn’t?”

“No, it didn’t. It asked me to run up to town and meet her just outside the typewriting school when the day’s work was over. I went, but I didn’t do exactly as I’d been asked. I suppose the party that wrote it hoped that I’d wait there until dark, and that when she didn’t come out I’d come to the conclusion that I’d missed her, and, being in town, would probably go somewhere else and make a night of it, as I most likely should have done under ordinary circumstances. But I didn’t feel like waiting round for that bally school to close; so as soon as I got there, I walked upstairs and asked to see her.”

“Humph! And she wasn’t there?”

“No, she wasn’t. And what’s more, she hadn’t been there for weeks and weeks. Had got a position up in Scotland, and is going to be married to a bank clerk next month.”

“Oho!” said Cleek, “I see! I see!”

He walked over to the other side of the room, where there was a huge potted azalea on an ebony pedestal. He had admired and he had examined that azalea earlier in the evening, so it was, perhaps, only natural that he should be attracted by it now. Still, for once in a way, it was not the blossoming beauty of the plant that lured him to it, much as flowers always had and always would appeal to him. He could see the trend of young Raynor’s tale now, the dim, shadowy outline of the argument he was putting forth, the suspicion he was endeavouring to lead; and he was afraid that something in his face or his eyes might betray the true state of his feelings if he remained there in the bright light for the man to study him. The big azalea offered the refuge of shadow. He walked there and stood in the shade of it, and began idly poking at the earth in the huge pot.

“Naturally, dear boy,” he went on, “when you heard that you knew that you had been taken in.”

“So I did, on the instant,” said young Raynor, tackling yet a fourth glass of brandy. “It was as plain as the nose on your face that somebody had tried to spoof me; somebody had an interest in sending me off to town on a wild-goose chase and getting me out of this neighbourhood to-night, and that that somebody hadn’t reckoned upon my doing what I did, and didn’t know about my having promised you to take you to see Mignon de Varville, when that blithering letter intervened. And speaking of that I say, Barchie, we’ll go to-night, if you like eh, what?”

“Sorry, dear boy,” said Cleek, whose intention was to get out on the Common to-night and test the truth of Geoff Clavering’s story; “sorry, but I’m afraid we’ll have to put that off until to-morrow. Thinking you weren’t coming back in time, I arranged with the ladies for an evening of bridge; so, if you don’t join us, you’ll have to pay your respects to ‘Pink Gauze’ to-night without me. And, by the way, how did you get that bit of pink gauze, old chap? Any particular significance attached to it?”

“Lord, no! Bit of gauze scarf she wore the other night always wears pink, by the way caught in my watch chain. Tore in gettin’ loose, and I kept the bit as a memento.”

“Ah, I see. Well, get on with the other subject; I’m immensely interested. As soon as you’d found out that Katie What’s-her-name couldn’t have written the letter, and that you’d been deceived by somebody, then what?”

“Why, then I put back home by the first possible train. I had my suspicions yes, rather so I came back to prove them true.”

“And did you?”

“Ah, didn’t I? Nobody knew of my affair with Katie outside of my father, and my father has a typewriter ready to hand, and typewriters don’t betray anybody’s ‘fist.’ I went to the lodgekeeper. No messenger had passed him to-day. I went to Hawkins and Hamer. No messenger had brought any letter that they knew of to the house. I couldn’t ask Johnston, because this is his evening off; but no doubt that when I do ask him he’ll say the same. Well, now, you put all those things together, Barch, and see for yourself what they make. As nobody but my father knew anything about the girl, and nobody gave him a letter, and he has a typewriter ready to hand, why there you are. He wrote the letter, that’s what. And if he wrote it to get me away and keep me away until late at night, why he’s got a devilish good reason for it; and if he has got a reason for doing things at night that he doesn’t want other people to know about and doesn’t want his own son to discover, then he’s playing a double game. And last, when a man sets himself up for a howling saint in the virtue line and yet plays a double game, why he’s a rotter and a hypocrite, whether he’s my father or not, and I’m not going to stand it.” He nodded with drunken solemnity. “I’m going to have it out with him to-night, you’ll see. Come with me if you like ”

“Not I, old man, I’ve promised to join the ladies, see you later, eh?” said Cleek, and with a look of unseen contempt at the drink-sodden figure, he turned abruptly and left the youth to continue his potations at his own sweet will.