“I say, I say,” his breath came rattling and wheezing. “What’s up at the Hour?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” I answered curtly.
“They said you took it yesterday. You’ve been playing the very devil, haven’t you? But I suppose it was not off your own bat?”
“Oh, I never play off my own bat,” I answered.
“Of course I don’t want to intrude,” he said again. In the gloom I was beginning to discern the workings of the tortured apoplectic face. “But, I say, what’s de Mersch’s little game?”
“You’d better ask him,” I answered. It was incredibly hateful, this satyr’s mask in the dim light.
“He’s not in London,” it answered, with a wink of the creased eyelids, “but, I suppose, now, Fox and de Mersch haven’t had a row, now, have they?”
I did not answer. The thing was wearily hateful, and this was only the beginning. Hundreds more would be asking the same question in a few minutes.
The head wagged on the mountainous shoulders.
“Looks fishy,” he said. I recognised that, to force words from me, he was threatening a kind of blackmail. Another voice began to call from the top of the stairs—