"Meet him?—him? Your pardon, Sir Roderick." He brushed his hand over his eyes, but they were dull again.… "No, thank you"—he turned to the Chairman—"It's only two steps to the car; I don't want anyone's arm.… Well, yes, I'm obliged to you. Queer, how tired I feel.… Good night, gentlemen!"
The car purred and glided away. "I feel a bit uneasy about our Candidate," said the Chairman as we watched the rear-light turn the corner. "He's had a shock.… Well, we live in stirring times, and one more evening's over!"
"But it isn't!" I cried out on a sudden thought. "Man, we've forgotten the reporters! If they've left the building the whole town will be red before we're well out of our beauty-sleep."
We made a plunge back for the hall and, as luck would have it, found three of the four reporters at the table. The early close had left them ahead of time, and two were copying out their shorthand while the third was engaged on a pithy paragraph or two under the headline of "Stormy Proceedings—A Professor Ejected. What happens to Dogs in the Silversmiths' College?"
I won't say how we prevailed with the Fourth Estate, except that it wasn't by bribery. The man writing the Pithy Pars did some cricket reporting at Lord's during the summer—some of the best, too. I was taking bread out of his mouth, and knew it. But it had to be done, and it was done, as a favour between gentlemen. He saw to the others.… God help those people who run down Cricket!
I knocked in at Foe's flat well on the virtuous side of midnight. Jimmy was in charge of the patient. Foe had got into an old Caius blazer and sat very far back in a wicker chair—lolled, in fact, on his shoulder-pins, sucking at a pipe and brooding.
"Give me a whisky-and-soda," said I. "If ever a man has earned it!"
"I somehow knew you'd turn up," said Jimmy, mixing. "Not a scratch? Tell us."
So I told. I didn't tell all, of course. I left out all the business in the lobby, what the steward had said, what Farrell had said, and my traffic with the reporters. I humped myself on my display of oratory.
I must have thrown this—necessarily thrown it—somewhat out of proportion.