“No offense, Mr. Batterby,” said Sir Jeremiah. “No offense,” and he handed his cigarette case to him to emphasize the good feeling. Mr. Batterby took a cigarette. “So you’ve left the Messenger, ’ave you? That’s what they tell me. Well, I don’t suppose you’d mind our crowd.”
“No, sir,” said Batterby, taking care not to grasp the lifebuoy with too much enthusiasm.
Sir Jeremiah laughed pleasantly.
“Thought they could make a story about John K., did they?” he said. “Funny how child-like people do stop! I wouldn’t have thought it of ’em. Of the Duke, I mean. ’Owever, you can’t ever tell. Now, if I ’ad been asked,” went on Sir Jeremiah with the happiness of his very considerable fortune spread all over his face, “if I ’ad been asked what risky thing I wouldn’t do, just now this minute, I should ’a said, touching Touaregs; and if I had been asked what was suicide, I should ’a said, touching John K. D’yer get me?”
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Batterby, thawing a little. “That’s what I thought, sir. I told his Grace that.”
“Ah? And what did ’e say?”
Sir Jeremiah Walton, God’s Servant.
“Well, sir,” said Batterby slowly, recalling the exact terms of the conversation in the inner room of the Messenger, “his Grace gave me to understand that he greatly needed this piece of news, and he told me that he could not conceal his regret that I had not imparted it to him. I told him that I thought I had acted for the best, and he answered: ‘I am sure, Batterby, you did what you thought best. But don’t let it occur again.’ Well, sir, I may have been wrong, but that’s a tone I am not used to; so what I answered was this. I said: ‘Well, your Grace, I am afraid if I don’t give satisfaction here I am not where I should be.’ ‘Oh, don’t say that,’ he said; but I was firm and I said: ‘Yes, your Grace, I don’t say which is to blame, but I do say that I must regard my connection with the Messenger as being at an end,’ and then, sir, I went out. You mustn’t blame me, Sir Jeremiah, I think I was acting as one gentleman should to another.”