“He ought to be in South Africa,” I said. “And so ought you.”
And with an eloquence which rather surprised me, I hauled up my slacks for perhaps ten minutes on the subject of his duty to his family and what not. I appealed to his sense of decency. I boosted South Africa with vim. I said everything I could think of, much of it twice over. But all the blighter did was to babble about his dashed brother’s baseness in putting one over on him in the matter of the cigarette-case. He seemed to think that Claude, by slinging in the handsome gift, had got right ahead of him; and there was a painful scene when the latter came back from Hurst Park. I could hear them talking half the night, long after I had tottered off to bed. I don’t know when I’ve met fellows who could do with less sleep than those two.
* * * * *
After this, things became a bit strained at the flat owing to Claude and Eustace not being on speaking terms. I’m all for a certain chumminess in the home, and it was wearing to have to live with two fellows who wouldn’t admit that the other one was on the map at all.
One felt the thing couldn’t go on like that for long, and, by Jove, it didn’t. But, if anyone had come to me the day before and told me what was going to happen, I should simply have smiled wanly. I mean, I’d got so accustomed to thinking that nothing short of a dynamite explosion could ever dislodge those two nestlers from my midst that, when Claude sidled up to me on the Friday morning and told me his bit of news, I could hardly believe I was hearing right.
“Bertie,” he said, “I’ve been thinking it over.”
“What over?” I said.
“The whole thing. This business of staying in London when I ought to be in South Africa. It isn’t fair,” said Claude warmly. “It isn’t right. And the long and the short of it is, Bertie, old man, I’m leaving to-morrow.”
I reeled in my tracks.
“You are?” I gasped.