"And there is plenty you could say," chimed in Mr. Spink, who had escorted his friend.
"Maybe there is," muttered Alf.
The Archdeacon made a grimace. In the matter of sex indeed if in no other, he was and always had been a genuine aristocrat—sensitive, refined, fastidious.
"Two of them get soaking together in the Star," continued Alf. "Then they start telling each other dirty stories and quarrellin. Ern believes it all and comes and makes a fuss. Mr. Pigott's chairman on the Bench. Course he lays it all on me—Mr. Pigott would. Ern can't do no wrong in his eyes—never could. Won't listen to reason and blames me along of him—because I'm a Churchman. See, he's never forgiven me leaving the Chapel, Mr. Pigott hasn't; and that's the whole story."
It was a good card to play; and it did its work.
"It's a cleah case to my mind of more sinned against than sinning," said the Archdeacon with a genuinely kind smile. "You had bad luck, Caspar—but a good friend." He shook hands with both young men. "I wish you well and offer you my sympathy. I think you should go and have a word of explanation with our friend, Mr. Pigott, though."
"Yes, sir," said Alf. "I'm goin now. I couldn't let it rest there."
Alf went straight on to interview the erring chairman in the little villa in Victoria Drive.
The latter, summing up his old pupil with shrewd blue eye in which there was a hint of battle, refused to discuss the case or his judgment.
"What's done is done," he said. "The law's the law and there's no goin back on it. You were lucky to get off so light; that's my notion of it."