Most of the members were present at the funeral, but not all. Lord Charles Baringstoke was not there, but he expressed his regrets afterwards, leaning against the wall in the card-room with a cigarette in one side of his loose mouth.
“I’d always meant to see the beggar planted, but, you see, I didn’t know when the thing was going to start. So we’d one rubber to fill in time. Then, just when the lights went past the window, we were game and twenty-eight, and it looked like our only being five minutes late anyhow; but I got my spades doubled and the little slam up against me, and then they made an odd trick in hearts, and we were finally bust on a dam-silly no-trumper of my partner’s. Still, I’m sorry you know, though it couldn’t be helped. Everybody going to bed? One more little drink—what?”
Already on the screen in the hall there was a notice calling an emergency meeting of the members in the afternoon for the election of an honorary secretary who would also be a member of the committee. Neither Pryce nor Mast had cared to undertake the secretarial work.
Standing by the screen, Sir John Sweetling, in conversation with some of the more responsible members of the club, pronounced the panegyric upon Bassett. “He never, or very rarely, drank; he liked business, and he kept the books well.” Sir John paused a moment in thought, and added, “And he wrote an excellent hand.”
“And paid nodings for it,” said round-eyed Mr Mandelbaum. “But zen it put him in ze know.”
It was long before Sir John could get any sleep that night. His mind was still active and anxious. The old questions still bothered him. What compact, if any, had been made between King Smith and Lechworthy? Was it just possible that the King had not given the Exiles’ Club away? If he had, which seemed almost certain, would Pryce be able to carry out what he had undertaken? Would Pryce be able to save himself when the Snowflake was scuttled or burned? And then there were many worries in connection with the club. Who could be found to take Bassett’s place? What could be done about Cyril Mast, whose folly was the cause of all that had happened? Some advantage might be taken of his repentance.
It seemed to Sir John that he had only been asleep for a few minutes when he was awakened by a loud knock at his door. It was just daylight. Sir John was rather startled. He glanced at his revolver on the table by his bedside and shouted “Come in.”
“Sorry to disturb you,” said Dr Pryce, as he entered. He was dressed, and he sat down and laced his boots as he talked. “But I’ve got to be off. A letter was brought to me ten minutes ago from Lechworthy. His niece is ill—seriously ill, I should say, and he wants me at once. He seems to have sent the letter through the King—at any rate Smith’s waiting for me in a buggy outside.”
Sir John was wide awake and out of bed by now. He thrust his feet into a pair of soft red leather slippers. He was quite a good figure of a man, but his tendency to corpulence was more noticeable in his yellow silk pyjamas, and one gets untidy at night. “But this is a new move, Pryce,” he said. “This secures your passage on the Snowflake.” He peered into the looking-glass and used two hairbrushes quickly. Then he suddenly wheeled round, with the brushes still in his hands. “By God! it settles everything. You needn’t go near the Snowflake. Don’t you see?”