Then, because he had refused to go into his father's business.
Last of all, because of Captain Drayton and the Moving Fortress.
Nicky had said that his father, who was paying his rent, couldn't afford the house with the studio in the garden; and Desmond said Nicky's father could afford it perfectly well if he liked. He said he had refused to go into his father's business for reasons which didn't concern her. Desmond pointed out that the consequences of his refusal were likely to concern her very much indeed. As for Captain Drayton and the Moving Fortress, nobody but a supreme idiot would have done what Nicky did.
But Nicky absolutely refused to discuss what he had done. Nobody but a cad and a rotter would have done anything else.
In the matter of the Moving Fortress what had happened was this.
The last of the drawings was not finished until Desmond had settled down in the flat in Aubrey Walk. You couldn't hurry Desmond. Nicky hadn't even waited to sign his name in the margins before he had packed the plans in his dispatch box and taken them to the works, and thence, hidden under a pile of Morss estimates, to Eltham. He couldn't rest till he had shown them to Frank Drayton. He could hardly wait till they had dined, and till Drayton, who thought he was on the track of a new and horrible explosive, had told him as much as he could about it.
Nicky gave his whole mind to Drayton's new explosive in the hope that, when his turn came, Drayton would do as much for him.
"You know," he said at last, "the old idea of the forteresse mobile?
"Yes."
He couldn't tell whether Drayton was going to be interested or not. He rather thought he wasn't.