“I don’t suppose she noticed it at all, the little fathead. I’ll bet it didn’t register in any way whatsoever.”
“Come, Tuppy,” I urged, “this is morbid. Don’t take this gloomy view. She must at least have spotted that you refused those nonnettes de poulet Agnès Sorel. It was a sensational renunciation and stuck out like a sore thumb. And the cèpes à la Rossini——”
A hoarse cry broke from his twisted lips:
“Will you stop it, Bertie! Do you think I am made of marble? Isn’t it bad enough to have sat watching one of Anatole’s supremest dinners flit by, course after course, without having you making a song about it? Don’t remind me of those nonnettes. I can’t stand it.”
I endeavoured to hearten and console.
“Be brave, Tuppy. Fix your thoughts on that cold steak-and-kidney pie in the larder. As the Good Book says, it cometh in the morning.”
“Yes, in the morning. And it’s now about half-past nine at night. You would bring that pie up, wouldn’t you? Just when I was trying to keep my mind off it.”
I saw what he meant. Hours must pass before he could dig into that pie. I dropped the subject, and we sat for a pretty good time in silence. Then he rose and began to pace the room in an overwrought sort of way, like a zoo lion who has heard the dinner-gong go and is hoping the keeper won’t forget him in the general distribution. I averted my gaze tactfully, but I could hear him kicking chairs and things. It was plain that the man’s soul was in travail and his blood pressure high.
Presently he returned to his seat, and I saw that he was looking at me intently. There was that about his demeanour that led me to think that he had something to communicate.
Nor was I wrong. He tapped me significantly on the knee and spoke: