I
know one thing: it makes me feel a deal worse, and as if I should like
to pitch him over the banisters. I 'ate that chap--that's what's the
matter with me--and I'd tell him so to his face as soon as look at him,
that I would!"

Jerry closed the door and went across the lobby, hearing the heavy pace
of his master as he walked restlessly up and down the room.

"The scoundrel!" Lacey muttered. "He is a scoundrel, and I'm a fool--a
pigeon, and he has plucked me. I swear he cheated. He played that very
trick I was once warned about. Serve me right! But it's the last
time."

He continued his hurried pace, growing sterner and more decisive as he
walked.

"A lesson to me!" he muttered. "A dishonourable scoundrel! At Miss
Deane's, too! I swear he has been trying to oust me, and the old lady
has encouraged him. Anna told me of his words to her. One can't call a
man out now; and if I spread it abroad about the cards there'll be no
end of a row, and he'd be indignant. No, I won't speak. It's a lesson
to me for being such an easy-going fool."

He turned thoughtful now, but was ready to look up sharply as Jerry
entered.

"Want me any more 'smornin', sir?"

"No, Brigley, no. You have heard no more news of poor Smithson?"

"No, sir, not a word."

"Strange how I have been thinking of him all the night."

"So have I, sir. I went to sleep, too, out in the lobby, and I've just
recollected, sir, I was dreaming all about him and wondering where he'd
gone."

"Ah, it's a bad business, Brigley. He ought to have known better. But
we all do things we are sorry for sometimes and repent of them
afterwards. There, be off to bed."

"Shan't I clear up a bit, sir, first?"

"No: that will do."

Jerry went out of the room and shut the door after him--to stand looking
back, as if he expected to be able to see through the panels everything
that was going on. His brow was wrinkled up, his nostrils twitched, and
his ears moved slightly, for he was listening intently; and a looker-on
would have seen that he was intensely excited.

For Jerry was thinking about cases he had read of in the papers, and,
being somehow naturally prone to fancy people in trouble likely to make
away with themselves by jumping into flooded rivers, he now took up the
idea that the lieutenant, after a disastrous night of play, had some
reason for desiring to get rid of him.

"There's two double centre-fire breech-loaders in the case," he said