The messenger bore back to Bolter’s that invaluable envelope. Charlie Terrard had spent the half hour in drinking with his prey as amicably as a brother. Mr. Petre’s answer was given him by a Club servant. He just put it into his pocket, and for a few minutes more the two men, still settled down side by side, talked first of a cousin’s accident in the hunting field, from that to new Rotor roads, from that to Rotors, and they had not been upon that dangerous ground for the space of three replies before Cassleton said, “You know, Charlie, Trefusis won’t take any stock of this yarn of yours.”
“I can’t help that,” said Terrard simply. “I did the right thing. I told you at once. You know what you’d have thought of me if I hadn’t; and if you won’t meet Petre in time, believe me, so much the worse for you.”
Cassleton put on an air of distress.
“It isn’t exactly that, Charlie,” he said. “You know as well as I do what I mean. Trefusis wouldn’t say it isn’t true. What he does say is that he takes no stock of it.”
“Well, he’ll be selling stock pretty soon,” said Charlie, as grimly as his easy voice could manage such a tone. Then he added: “Surely Trefusis knows what kind of a man Petre is?”
Cassleton nodded. “Oh, yes,” he said, “everybody knows that.”
“Perhaps everybody does not know it as I know it,” said Charlie. “It is the amazing everyday sort of way that he does these things. He moves the price of a City like a man taking off his hat; he decides in five minutes.”
“They’re all supposed to do that,” said Cassleton wearily.
“Well, he does it,” said Charlie with unusual emphasis, even sitting up slightly in the effort and then sinking back again. “Now you said just now there was no writing, and you saw me write and you saw me get the answer. Perhaps you thought I’d nothing to show you. Well, I don’t know whether this means anything to you,” he went on, pulling out the envelope. “It’s only a chance note, but you must be blind if you can’t see the man through the few words,” and he tossed Mr. Petre’s innocuous, candid five lines over to Trefusis’ lieutenant.
Cassleton looked with a languid eye over these five lines and restrained himself. It was getting hotter than he thought.