Anthony sat down upon the bed. “How are you?” he said. He said it to gain time. His thoughts, once so carefully ordered, had been thrown into much confusion. That bow had been so extremely distant.
“To tell you the truth,” Deacon said slowly and heavily, “I feel absolutely rotten! It’s beginning to get on my nerves—all this!” He made a sweeping gesture. “It—I feel——” He broke off and laughed. “Fan-tods won’t do any good, will they? And it’s only what I might have expected. Nurse always told me my middle name was Crippen.”
Admiration and sympathy cleared Anthony’s head. “When’s the magistrate’s court?” he asked abruptly.
“The balloon, I believe, goes up at 10 a. m. the day after to-morrow.”
Anthony muttered: “Day after to-morrow, eh? Well, it may,” and relapsed into silence.
Deacon half rose, then sat down again. “After you left me last night,” he said, after a pause, “I had a visit from Crabbe—the solicitor Digby-Coates got. We had a long talk, and he’s going to prime Marshall, who’s going to come and see me to-morrow himself. So all the legal business is fixed up.”
“Good,” said Anthony. “What I came for this morning was to ask you two questions. Are you ready?”
“Aye ready!”
“Have you any money? Beside the salary you got from Hoode, I mean.”
“About two hundred and fifty a year,” said Deacon. “When Cousin James dies of port it’ll be about three thousand.”