It was well done. Even I, much as I wished that he would stop wrenching one of my best ties all out of shape, was obliged to admit that. I suppose it was his lifelong training in staggering under the blows of Fate that made him so convincing. The Price family seemed to be shaken to its foundations. There was no water in the room, but a horde of juvenile Prices immediately rushed off in quest of some, and meanwhile the rest of the family gathered about the stricken man, solicitous and sympathetic.
“My aunt! Ill!” moaned Ukridge.
“I shouldn’t worry, o’ man,” said a voice at the door.
So sneering and altogether unpleasant was this voice that for a moment I almost thought that it must have been the sea-gull that had spoken. Then, turning, I perceived a young man in a blue flannel suit. A young man whom I had seen before. It was the Peacemaker, the fellow who had soothed and led away the infuriated bloke to whom Ukridge owed a bit of money.
“I shouldn’t worry,” he said again, and looked malevolently upon Ukridge. His advent caused a sensation. Mr. Price, who had been kneading Ukridge’s shoulder with a strong man’s silent sympathy, towered as majestically as his five feet six would permit him.
“Mr. Finch,” he said, “may I enquire what you are doing in my house?”
“All right, all right——”
“I thought I told you——”
“All right, all right,” repeated Ernie Finch, who appeared to be a young man of character. “I’ve only come to expose an impostor.”
“Impostor!”