"Shut up, Jack," said Dick hastily. "You are entirely off the track, Mr. Barnstable. Neligage didn't write 'Love in a Cloud.'"
"Didn't write it?" stammered the visitor.
"I give you my word he didn't."
Barnstable looked about with an air of helplessness which was as funny as his anger had been.
"Then who did?" he demanded.
"If Mr. Barnstable had only mentioned sooner that he wished me to write it," Jack observed graciously, "I'd have been glad to do my best."
"Shut up, Jack," commanded Dick once more. "Really, Mr. Barnstable, it does seem a little remarkable that you should go rushing about in this extraordinary way without knowing what you are doing. You'll get into some most unpleasant mess if you keep on."
"Or bring up in a lunatic asylum," suggested Jack with the most unblushing candor.
Barnstable looked from one to the other with a bewildered expression as if he were just recovering his senses. He walked to the table and took up a glass of water, looked around as if for permission, and swallowed it by uncouth gulps.
"Perhaps I'd better go," he said, and turned toward the door.