Mr Campion hesitated, and then shrugged his shoulders.
‘I’m afraid you’ve got a very wrong idea of me,’ he said. ‘When I told you that I never did anything in bad taste, I meant it. Sticking an old boy in the middle of a house-party parlour-game occurs to me to be the height of bad form. Besides, consider, I was only getting a hundred guineas. Had my taste been execrable I wouldn’t have risked putting my neck in a noose for a hundred guineas, would I?’
Abbershaw was silent. The other had voiced the argument that had occurred to himself, but it left the mystery no clearer than before.
Campion smiled.
‘Put me down as near Piccadilly as you can, old man, will you?’ he said.
Abbershaw nodded, and they drove on in silence.
At last, after some considerable time, he drew up against the kerb on the corner of Berkeley Street. ‘Will this do you?’ he said.
‘Splendidly. Thanks awfully, old bird. I shall run into you some time, I hope.’
Campion held out his hand as he spoke, and Abbershaw, overcome by an impulse, shook it warmly, and the question that had been on his lips all the drive suddenly escaped him.
‘I say, Campion,’ he said, ‘who the hell are you?’