He stopped abruptly. Wiggie was looking at him.
“Tramming again, old dear?” Dandy put up her hand to meet his. “It’s rather a dangerous experiment, playing Providence in your wholesale fashion. And what do you know about Harriet’s ‘one big thing’?”
“I was only talking. Probably I’m right out of it, but one just wonders. Hadn’t you and Mother better be getting off to bed?”
But when they had taken his advice, and Wigmore had closed the door behind them, Hamer got up slowly and knocked his ash into the fire, a sorrowful expression on his handsome face.
“Some have Paradise and some Elections,” he said, not looking at Wiggie, collapsed now like a tired child in his chair. “And the others—what have the others got, Cyril, my boy?”
“Dead candles and a tune in the throat!” Wiggie answered, with closed eyes, and began to croon—
“Ma chandelle est morte,
Je n’ai plus de feu.”
Good Hamer sighed.