“Most likely,” said Fullerton. “I never heard it myself till a day or two ago.”
“Why, what a sweep the fellow must be,” declared Driffield. “Lamont has been putting him up since Peters picked him up in the mopani veldt, nearly dead with thirst. Saved his life, in fact. I know it’s Ancram, because he pitched me the same yarn—of course ‘in strict confidence.’ Confidence indeed!”
“What a cur!” pronounced Clare. “Oh, what a completely loathsome cur!”
“Hear—hear!” ejaculated Driffield.
“Cur or not,” said Fullerton, who over and above his dislike of Lamont was naturally of a contradictious temperament,—“cur or not, the story has a good deal of bearing on what we know out here—”
“If it’s true,” interjected Clare, with curling lips.
”—He left a kid to drown. Said he wasn’t going to risk his life for a gutter kid—and wouldn’t go in after it even when the girl he was engaged to implored him to. She called him a coward then and there, and gave him the chuck. This chap Ancram saw it all. He was there.”
“Then why didn’t he go in after it himself?” suggested Clare, with provoking pertinence.
“Says he couldn’t get there, or something. Anyway Lamont’s girl chucked him then and there. She was the daughter of some county big-wig too.”
“Of course I wasn’t there,” said Clare, “and the man who enjoyed Mr Lamont’s hospitality, as a stranger in a strange land, was. Still, I should like to hear the other side of the story.”