"What?"
"Don't look at me like that, you silly old ass! It's not—not what you think," he laughed nervously. "I have bet Scaife twenty-five pounds, the amount of my debt in fact, that the bill-of-fare of to-night's supper at the Carlton Hotel will be handed to him after Chapel to-morrow morning. I bike up to town, and bike back. If I don't go this Saturday, I have one more chance before the term is over. That's all."
"That's all," repeated John, stupefied.
"If you can show me an easier way to make a 'pony,' I'll be obliged to you."
"Scaife egged you on to this piece of folly?"
"No, he didn't."
"You may as well make a clean breast of it."
Bit by bit John extracted the facts. Behind them, of course, stood Scaife, loving evil for evil's sake, planting evil, gleaning evil, deliberately setting about the devil's work. Desmond, it appeared, had persuaded Scaife not to go to town till the Lord's match was over. Since the match Scaife had spent two nights in London, whetting an inordinate appetite for forbidden fruit; exciting in Desmond also, not an appetite for the fruit itself, but for the mad excitement of a perilous adventure. Then, when the thoughtless "I'd like a lark of that sort" had been spoken, came the derisive answer, "You haven't the nerve for it." And then again the subtle leading of an ardent and self-willed nature into the morass, Scaife pretending to dissuade a friend, entreating him to consider the risk, urging him to go to bed, as if he were a headstrong child. And finally Desmond's challenge, "Bet you I have the nerve," and its acceptance, protestingly, by the other, and permission given that John should be told.
"And it's to-night?"
"I mean to have that bill-of-fare. Do you think I'd back out now?"