"I'm damned if it will," Turner declared vehemently, but there was a note of fear in his voice as he continued: "It's out of the question. I mean I'm not doing so badly at the office and all that. If only the old man allowed me a decent screw, I should be all right. In an office like ours you simply have to be in everything that's going. Sometimes one of the partners 'll put you in to what he thinks is a good thing, for instance, and you're practically bound to have a fiver on. There's a lot of that sort of thing anyhow you can't keep out of."
"And how much notice d'you think the old man'll take of that?" Hubert asked, without looking up.
Turner almost whimpered. "He's got to put me right," he protested, "absolutely got to."
Hubert rocked silently from foot to foot. "He hasn't," he said quietly, "and you can't make him. You know that well enough. What did Eleanor say?"
"She promised to do all she could," Turner replied unhopefully, and added: "I'd sooner emigrate than come to live down here."
"Got the money for your passage?" Hubert inquired.
"I suppose I could get that somehow," Turner said. "Trouble'd be to dodge my creditors. Besides, some of the money must be paid—fellows in the office and so on. I couldn't let them down."
"You'll be living here before you're a week older," Hubert decided. "Safe as houses."
Turner began to pace up and down the billiard room. There was possibly a touch of the histrionic in his manner of doing it, but he was without question genuinely distressed.
"Oh, I'll be double damned if I do!" he repeated. "It's all very well for you—you seem to like this sort of life—but I'd be a raving lunatic in a month. I simply couldn't stand it. I—oh! God! I'll make the old man pay. Why the devil shouldn't he? He's got more money than he knows what to do with."