“But—” Freddie rushed to his hero’s defence. “But it wasn’t that at all. Something quite different. I mean, Derek didn’t even know Jill had lost her money. He broke the engagement because …” Freddie stopped short. He didn’t want everybody to know of that rotten arrest business, as they infallibly would if he confided in Ronny Devereux. Sort of thing he would never hear the last of. “He broke it off because of something quite different.”
“Oh, yes!” said Ronny skeptically.
“But he did, really!”
Ronny shook his head.
“Don’t you believe it, old son. Don’t you believe it. Stands to reason it must have been because the poor girl was broke. You wouldn’t have done it and I wouldn’t have done it, but Underhill did, and that’s all there is to it. I mean, a tick’s a tick, and there’s nothing more to say. Well, I know he’s been a pal of yours, Freddie, but, next time I meet him, by Jove, I’ll cut him dead. Only I don’t know him to speak to, dash it!” concluded Ronny regretfully.
Ronny’s news had upset Freddie. Derek had returned to the Albany a couple of days ago, moody and silent. They had lunched together at the Bachelors, and Freddie had been pained at the attitude of his fellow clubmen. Usually, when he lunched at the Bachelors, his table became a sort of social center. Cheery birds would roll up to pass the time of day, and festive old eggs would toddle over to have coffee and so forth, and all that sort of thing. Jolly! On this occasion nobody had rolled, and all the eggs present had taken their coffee elsewhere. There was an uncomfortable chill in the atmosphere of which Freddie had been acutely conscious, though Derek had not appeared to notice it. The thing had only come home to Derek yesterday at the Albany, when the painful episode of Wally Mason had occurred. It was this way:
“Hullo, Freddie, old top! Sorry to have kept you waiting.”
Freddie looked up from his broken meditations, to find that his host had arrived.
“Hullo!”
“A quick bracer,” said Algy Martyn, “and then the jolly old food-stuffs. It’s pretty late, I see. Didn’t notice how time was slipping.”