For a time George listened with interest, for murders, dash it, are interesting, say what you like. Then he listened with less interest, for murders, hang it, are a bit what-you-might-call boring, taken in the mass; a good juicy mystery with his morning-paper George enjoyed as much as any one, but one, in George’s opinion, was enough at a time. Besides, after a fellow had done some one in and been well and truly hanged for it, what on earth was there to go on yapping about? George listened with growing boredom.
“What about a foursome to-morrow morning, Guy?” said George. “We can get Dawks to make up the four. She doesn’t play at all too badly.”
“When are your sister and brother-in-law coming, Guy?” said George.
“I say, hadn’t we better be getting into the drawing-room?” said George. “They’ll be wondering what’s happened to us.”
He might have saved himself the trouble; for when two or three criminologists are gathered together, then is for them neither time nor space, sweetheart nor wife, necessity nor law.
They talked on.
“I say,” said George, nerving himself for a supreme effort, “I’m getting a bit fed up with all this chat about murder.”
Never once before in all his life had George so much as hinted that anything his elder and superior did, came to him the least little bit amiss; never before had the disciple ventured to criticise the master. At school where there were three years between them (and three years at school is an eternity) the small but beefy George, a stolid boy in those days, had worshipped, humbly adoring, at the shrine of Guy, the Head of his House. When Guy, who had only just scraped his second fifteen cap, came down as an old boy to find George captain of the school fifteen and runner-up for the captaincy of the cricket eleven, George had all but wept for joy to hear himself addressed almost on equal terms.
At Oxford, where Guy was a fourth-year man, the time of George’s fresherhood had been brightened and sanctified by the presence in the same town of his divinity. Had not George been permitted to be the humble instrument for bringing about Guy’s marriage with the only woman in this world remotely approaching worthiness, and had he not been rewarded beyond rubies by being allowed to be the great one’s best man—an honour he valued far more than the note from his captain announcing that he had been awarded a blue for rugger? Yet, after all that, here he was, red in the face and not unconscious of his epoch-making action, saying gruffly that he was getting fed up with all that chat about murder! Murder has turned people into revolutionaries before George.
The two ghouls paused in their banquet and turned glazed eyes upon George. Had they heard aright?