“I beg your pardon. If there is anything I can do ‘at the cost of a few days’ unpleasantness’ I shall certainly not grudge them.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” I said. “There’s a devil of a lot to be done. You’d better sit while we discuss it.”
“Well?” he asked as he took the chair in which Jakoub had last faced me.
I felt I had a much harder, much more important contest before me now, one in which I should have no aid from revolvers or other mechanical weapons.
“Under the circumstances,” I said, “I cannot consent to your calmly clearing out and leaving me with all this very incriminating stuff on my hands.”
“You’ll have no difficulty in getting rid of it. That was all arranged. If you had left it to Jakoub and Van Ermengen——”
“I know that. It would have been distributed by sneaks in spite of all we English are doing to prevent it.”
“We English are fools to try to prevent it. If you knew the people that take it!”
This remark depressed me almost more than anything that had yet occurred. It gave me the measure of Edmund’s deterioration. I was again reminded of the bishop’s remark about becoming déclassé. But I had not thought the process could have led to this.
“We may be fools, as you say,” I replied, “but it is our habit to be decent fools. That is cricket. You and I cannot start playing pitch-and-toss like street boys and obstructing the field.”