"Quite right, old boy, only come to the point."
"That's all right, Aubrey, don't you be afraid. I'm nursing her along by the rails. You can lay a hundred pounds to a box of George's cigars bar one. And that one's me. Where was I? Ah, yes. Well, I'm not going to say a word against Stephen, Johnnie. He's a friend of yours. He's my boss. He's one of England's leading ecclesiastical architects. But that doesn't help me when I find myself in a Somersetshire village seven miles from the nearest station arguing with a deaf parson about the restoration of his moldy church. Does it? Of course not. It doesn't help me when I find myself sleeping in damp sheets and woken up at seven o'clock by a cross between a gardener and a charwoman for early service. Does it? Of course not. Architecture like everything else is a good job when you're waving the flag on top of the tower; but when you're digging the foundations it's rotten. Stevie and I have had our little differences, but when he's sober—I mean when I'm sober—he'll tell you that there's not one of his juniors he thinks better of than me. I'm against Gothic. I consider Gothic the muddle-headed expression of a muddle-headed period. But I've been loyal to Stevie, only...."
Hugh paused solemnly, while his friend regarded him with nervous solicitude.
"Only," Hugh repeated in a loud voice. "Metempsychosis," he murmured, and drinking two more glasses of wine, he sat back in his chair and shook his head in mute despair of human speech.
Aubrey took John aside.
"I'm afraid Hugh's too far gone to explain all the details to-night," he whispered. "But it's really very serious. You see he found an old check book of Mr. Crutchley's, and more from a joke than anything else he tried to see if it was difficult to cash a check. It wasn't. He succeeded. But he's suspected. I helped him indirectly, but of course I don't come into the business except as an accessory. Only, if you take my advice, you'll call on Mr. Crutchley as soon as you can, and I'm sure you'll be able to square things up. You'll know how to manage him; but Hugh has a way of exasperating him."
All the bland, the almost infantine simplicity of Aubrey Fenton's demeanor did not avail to propitiate John's rage; and when the maid came in with a message from his hostess to ask if it would soon be convenient to allow the table to be cleared, he announced that he should not remain another minute in the house.
"But can Hugh count on your support?" Aubrey persisted. He spoke like an election agent who is growing rapidly doubtful of his candidate's prospects.
"He can count on nothing," said John, violently. "He can count on nothing at all. On absolutely nothing at all."
Anybody who had seen Hugh's condition at this moment would have agreed with John. His eyes had already lost even as much life as might have been discerned in the slow freezing of a puddle, and had now assumed the glassy fixity and perfect roundness of two bottle-stoppers.