"Yes, sir, in the smoking-room," replied the man, impassively, but with certainty.
In the smoking-room they came upon Dennison, purple of jowl, with his white fat hands folded across his paunch, smoking a cigarette and looking out at a window.
"Oh, how are you?" lifting his eyes, but never stirring. "How do, Scanlon?"
"Quite comfortable here of an afternoon," said Ashton-Kirk as he dropped into a chair at the other side of the window. "I had no idea."
"How could you have?" complained Dennison; "you drop in only once or twice in a year, and then only of a night, and when old Hungerford is in town."
Ashton-Kirk smiled as he thought of those rare nights with Hungerford over the chess board—nights when he matched himself against an intelligence almost mystical, and out of each contact with which he emerged, drenched with new understanding.
"I suppose that's so," he admitted. "But I should get here oftener." He looked interestedly at the other, and added: "Get over your little jolt of the other night all right?"
"I'm pretty shaky." Dennison looked at Bat who had possessed himself of an easy chair. "I don't know if Scanlon knows anything about how I'm doing or not. He's giving me confounded little attention. Never in, it seems, when I get there, and one of his understrappers must put me through."
"It all depends on yourself at this point in the race," spoke Scanlon, easily. "In a week or so I'll be ready to take you on. I'll be able to see what I'm doing then."
"Oh, I say, I'm not so beastly fleshy as all that!" protested Dennison, indignantly.