"Wonder if they're acting the giddy goat with me?" he soliloquized as he carelessly picked up a copy of The Times and began to scan the Personal Column.
Why he did so he hardly knew. There was little of interest to him in the long list of appeals for work by demobilized men, though it roused his sympathy. Somehow it didn't seem right that fellows who had fought for the country should have to eat out of the hands of the stay-at-homes who for a dead certainty would have had no home had the Hun been top-dog.
Half-way down the column he came across an advertisement of a length and novelty unusual even to the unique Agony Column of The Times. Its audacity held him until he became aware of the arrival of Villiers and Beverley by receiving a vigorous thump on his shoulder.
"Sorry we're late, old son," exclaimed the former apologetically. "Ran across old Hammersley just under the Bargate. You remember him?"
Claverhouse nodded, then put the paper on the table.
"Cast your eye on this, old thing," he said. "A bit tall, eh, what?"
"What, Rio del Oro shares? Thanks, I'm not having any," said Villiers decidedly.
"No, next column," explained Claverhouse. "There, where my thumb is."
"What's the wheeze?" inquired Beverley, craning his neck and looking over Villier's shoulder.
"That's what I want to know," replied Alec. "If there's anything in it, I'm on."