"Hullo!" broke in Piers. He had picked up the cup of tea and was sniffing it suspiciously. "You've been doctoring this!" he said.
"You drink it!" ordered Sir Beverley peremptorily. "I'm not going to have you laid up with rheumatic fever if I know it. Drink it, Piers! Do you hear?"
Piers looked for a moment as if he were on the verge of rebellion, then abruptly he raised the cup to his lips and drained it. He set it down with a shudder of distaste.
"You might have let me have it separately," he remarked. "Tea and brandy don't blend well. I shall sleep like a hog after this. Besides, I shouldn't have had rheumatic fever. It's not my way. Anything in the paper to-night?"
"Yes," said Sir Beverley disgustedly. "There's that prize-fight business."
"What's that?" Piers looked up with quick interest.
"Surely you saw it!" returned Sir Beverley. "That fellow Adderley—killed his man in a wrestling-match. A good many people said it was done by a foul."
"Adderley!" repeated Piers. "I know him. He gave me some quite useful tips once. What happened? It's the first I've heard of it."
"Well, he's a murderer," said Sir Beverley. "And he deserves to be hanged. He killed his man,—whether by a foul or not I can't say; but anyway he meant to kill him. It's obvious on the face of it. But they chose to bring it in manslaughter, and he's only got five years; while some brainless fool must needs write an article a column and a half long to protest against the disgraceful practice of permitting wrestling or boxing matches, which are a survival of the Dark Ages and a perpetual menace to our civilization! A survival of your grandmother! A nice set of nincompoops the race will develop into if such fools as that get their way! We're soft enough as it is, Heaven knows. Why couldn't they hang the scoundrel as he deserved? That's the surest way of putting an end to savagery. But to stop the sport altogether! It would be tomfoolery!"
Piers picked up the paper from the floor and smoothed it out. He proceeded to study it with drawn brows, and Sir Beverley sat and watched him with that in his stone-grey eyes which no one was ever allowed to see.