`That was how I met the Bittons. It's odd… but, you know, I admired Driscoll. He was everything I wasn't. I'm tall, and awkward, and near sighted. I was never good at games, either, and women thought I was — oh, nice and pleasant, and they'd tell me all about how they fell in love with other chaps.
`Driscoll — well, you know him. He had the air. And it was the case of the brilliant meteor and the good old plodding cab-horse who helped him out of difficulties. And I told you I was flattered to have my advice taken. But then I met Sheila….’
`It's damned funny why she looked at me. Other women never did. They thought it was funny, too. -I mean Phil's friends. And by funny, 'I mean comical, this time. One nice young dandy made a remark about "Old, parson-face and the moron daughter of Bitton's." I didn't mind being called parson-face; they all did it. But the other… I couldn't do anything then. I had to find another occasion, so I ran into him one night, and said I didn't like his face, and knocked it off. He didn't get out of the house for a week. But then they began laughing again, and said, "Good old Bob; he's a sly one," and they said I was after Sheila's money. That was awful. And it was worse when Sheila and I knew we loved each other, and told each other so, and the old man learned about it.
`He took me over for an interview and as much as said the same thing. I don't remember what I said, but I know I told him he could take his dirty money, well, you know. That surprised him. Sheila and I were going to be married, anyhow. Then he thought it over, and thought it over, and Major Bitton intervened. Somehow, I don't think the old man was so upset about what I said as I thought he'd be. He came down to see me, and said Sheila wasn't capable of looking after herself, and that if we'd promise to wait a year, and still felt the same way — there it was. I said that was all right, provided I did all the supporting of the new family without any help….
`I'll skip over the next part. Phil said he could tell me a way to make some easy money, and everything would be fine. And I was pretty desperate; Bitton's "year" only meant — and we both knew it — that at the end of the time he'd say my prospects were no better, were they? And I couldn't — expect Sheila to wait for me when she had so many chances for a good match!
`I got into a jam with my "money-making." Never mind that. It was my own fault. Phil… '
Dalrye hesitated. `That's neither here nor there. We were both in it, but I was the one who did the… Anyhow, if it ever got to the old man's ears, I was through. And I had to raise twelve hundred pounds in a week.'
He leaned back in his chair and, closed his eyes.
`Then I got this wild idea of stealing the manuscript from Phil and selling it to Arbor. It was insane. You know the scheme. I'd told him on Sunday night to phone me in the morning. He did wild-eyed. He was in some fresh difficulty. It was the — the wife matter, you know, but I didn't know it then. I had already impressed it on his mind that he had to conceal the manuscript; keep it in his rooms. It was so that I could get it out of the flat.
`And he did. He tried putting it back in the old man's car — you know about that before he came to the Tower to see me. But my instructions had so impressed him that, before he came to the Tower, he returned to his flat and hid the manuscript at the back of the grate in his study.