“What sort of a thing?” inquired his host uneasily.
“I don’t know,” replied Ferdy. “It ain’t a thing you can see.”
“If it’s a ghost, I don’t believe in ’em!” said his host, recovering his composure.
Ferdy shook his head. “Worse than that, Jack, dear boy! I’ll think of its name in a minute. Met it at Eton.”
“Dash it, Ferdy, I was at Eton the same time as you were, and you never said a word about anything creeping up behind you!”
“I may not have said anything, but it did. Crept up behind me when I broke that window in chapel.”
“Old Horley?” Mr Westgate said. “You don’t mean to tell me he’s come up to London? What’s he creeping up behind you for?”
“No, no!” replied Ferdy, irritated by his friend’s poverty of intellect. “Not old Horley! Thing that made him suspect me when I thought my tracks were covered. Not sure it ain’t a Greek thing. Might have been Latin, though, now I come to think of it.”
“I know what he means!” said Marmaduke. “What’s more, it proves he’s castaway, or he wouldn’t be thinking of such things. Nemesis! That’s it, ain’t it, Ferdy?”
“Nemesis!” repeated Ferdy, pleased to find himself understood at last. “That’s it! Dash it, it all goes to show, don’t it? Never thought the stuff they used to teach us at school would come in useful, but if I hadn’t had to learn a lot of Greek and Latin I shouldn’t have known about that thingummy. Forgotten its name again, but it don’t signify now.”