"I shall believe in it when I see it," I said.
At the end of a week he left me, as ever, without a hint where he was going or what he proposed to do. I stayed at Lake House till the second election of 1910, when Bertrand telegraphed to me to come and help him. Loring dined with me at the Club one night when the election was over, and suggested that I should accompany his mother, sister, the Daintons and himself to the South of France. The invitation was half-hearted, and I felt I had better wait until the process of rubbing off the corners was nearer completion. They left in January and returned in the first week in March. I was apprised of their presence in London by a special messenger, who pursued me, note in hand, from Princes Gardens to the House, where I had been dining with my uncle, and from the house to the Eclectic Club.
The note was in Loring's writing and begged me to come at once to Curzon Street.
"I suppose they've fixed the date at last," I said to Bertrand as he dropped me on his way home. "Now I shall be stuck with the privilege of being best man."
VII
It was after midnight when I arrived at Loring House. Jim was in the library, walking restlessly up and down and filling the fireplace with half-smoked cigarettes. He was in evening dress, and an overcoat and silk hat lay on the arm of a sofa.
"Come in!" he exclaimed, without interrupting his caged-lion walk. "Sorry to drag you out at this time of night. Have a drink? Have something to smoke. Sit down, won't you?"
He spoke in short, staccato sentences, waving a hand vaguely in the direction of the tantalus and cigars. The intensity of his manner was infectious: I pulled up a chair and settled myself to listen.
"Now then——" I began, as the door closed.
"It's ... it's come, George!" he stammered. "I'm up to my neck, and you're the only man who can pull me out."