“I wish you’d go to him this morning, Frank, and get him to write the letter. Then you could take it to one of the evening papers and get them to put it in. You know all those men in Park Row, don’t you?”
“Much better than some of them want to know me,” sighed the little man. “However,” he added, his bright smile coming back at once, “I ought not to complain. I’m getting on, now. Let me see. You want me to go to Routh and get him to write a formal letter over his name, denying all the statements made about you this morning. Isn’t that taking too much notice of the thing, after all, Jack?”
“It’s going to make a good deal of difference to me in the end,” answered Ralston. “It’s worth taking some trouble for.”
“I’m quite willing,” said Miner. “But—I say! What an extraordinary story it is!”
“Oh, no. It’s only real life. I told you—I only had one accident, which was quite an accident—when I tumbled down in that dark street. Everything else happened just as naturally as unnatural things always do. As for upsetting Ham Bright at the club, I was awfully sorry about that. It seemed such a low thing to do. But then—just remember that I’d been making a point of drinking nothing for several days, just by way of an experiment, and it was irritating, to say the least of it, to be grabbed by the arm and told that I was screwed. Wasn’t it, Frank? And just at that moment, uncle Robert had telephoned for me to come up, and I was in a tremendous hurry. Just look at in that way, and you’ll understand why I did it. It doesn’t excuse it—I shall tell Ham that I’m sorry—but it explains it. Doesn’t it?”
“Rather!” exclaimed Miner, heartily.
“By the bye,” said Ralston, “I wanted to ask you something. Did that fellow Crowdie hold his tongue? I suppose he was at the Assembly last night.”
“Well—since you ask me—” Miner hesitated. “No—he didn’t. Bright gave it to him, though, for telling cousin Emma.”
“Brute! How I hate that man! So he told cousin Emma, did he? And the rest of the family, too, I suppose.”
“I suppose so,” answered Miner, knowing that Ralston meant Katharine. “Everybody knew about the row at the club, before the evening was half over. Teddy Van De Water said he supposed you’d back out of the dinner to-night and keep quiet till this blew over. I told Teddy that perhaps he’d better come round and suggest that to you himself this morning, if he wanted to understand things quickly. He grinned—you know how he grins—like an organ pipe in a white tie. But he said he’d heard Bright leathering into Crowdie—that’s one of Teddy’s expressions—so he supposed that things weren’t as bad as people said—and that Crowdie was only a ‘painter chap,’ anyhow. I didn’t know what that meant, but feebly pointed out that Crowdie was a great man, and that his wife was a sort of cousin of mine, and that she, at least, had a good chance of having some of cousin Robert’s money one of these days. Not that I wanted to defend Crowdie, or that I don’t like Teddy much better—but then, you know what I mean! He’ll be calling me ‘one of those literary chaps,’ next, with just the same air. One’s bound to stand up for art and literature when one’s a professional, you know, Jack. Wasn’t I right?”