The manager eyed him coldly.
“That's hardly what I have been given to understand,” he said.
Westerham reddened with anger. It seemed to him that Rookley, being baffled, was seeking to make himself disagreeable. Westerham was beginning to feel indeed something like an outcast, moved on from place to place without time for rest.
“You want me to leave?” he asked shortly.
The manager made a queer sort of bow.
“Very well,” Westerham returned; “for my part I have no objection.”
To himself he reflected that within a few days the man would bitterly regret his mistake.
So Westerham packed his little bag and went out. First he went on foot to Victoria, where he left his bag in charge of the cloak-room.
Then he breakfasted at a restaurant, and after he had consumed a moderate quantity of doubtful ham and still more doubtful eggs he smoked cigarette after cigarette while he thought over the situation.
At last he hit upon a solution—as he thought—to the whole difficulty; a solution which was so extraordinarily daring that he laughed to himself as he conceived it.