“We did give you rather a grilling,” said Tegg placidly. “It’s the national sense of fair play.”
“I could have stood it all if it hadn’t been for the Neutral. We dined at the same hotel while this court-martial was going on, and he used to come over to my table and sympathise with me! He told me that I was fighting for his ideals and the uplift of democracy, but I must respect the Law of Nations!”
“And we respected ’em,” said Tegg. “His papers were perfectly correct; the Court discharged him. We had to consider existing political relations. I told Maddingham so at the hotel and he——”
Again Maddingham turned to the others. “I couldn’t make up my mind about Tegg at the Inquiry,” he explained. “He had the air of a decent sailor-man, but he talked like a poisonous politician.”
“I was,” Tegg returned. “I had been ordered to change into that rig. So I changed.”
Maddingham ran one fat square hand through his crisped hair and looked up under his eyebrows like a shy child, while the others lay back and laughed.
“I suppose I ought to have been on to the joke,” he stammered, “but I’d blacked myself all over for the part of Lootenant-Commander R.N.V.R. in time of war, and I’d given up thinking as a banker. If it had been put before me as a business proposition I might have done better.”
“I thought you were playing up to me and the judges all the time,” said Tegg. “I never dreamed you took it seriously.”
“Well, I’ve been trained to look on the law as serious. I’ve had to pay for some of it in my time, you know.”
“I’m sorry,” said Tegg. “We were obliged to let that oily beggar go—for reasons, but, as I told Maddingham, the night the award was given, his duty was to see that he was properly directed to Antigua.”