onny regretfully.

Ronny's news had upset Freddie. Derek had returned to the Albany a
couple of days ago, moody and silent. They had lunched together at the
Bachelors, and Freddie had been pained at the attitude of his
fellow-clubmen. Usually, when he lunched at the Bachelors, his table
became a sort of social centre. Cheery birds would roll up to pass the
time of day, and festive old eggs would toddle over to have coffee and
so forth, and all that sort of thing. Jolly! On this occasion nobody
had rolled, and all the eggs present had taken their coffee elsewhere.
There was an uncomfortable chill in the atmosphere of which Freddie
had been acutely conscious, though Derek had not appeared to notice
it. The thing had only come home to Derek yesterday at the Albany,
when the painful episode of Wally Mason had occurred. It was this
way....

"Hullo, Freddie, old top! Sorry to have kept you waiting."

Freddie looked up from his broken meditations, to find that his host
had arrived.

"Hullo!"

"A quick bracer," said Algy Martyn, "and then the jolly old
food-stuffs. It's pretty late, I see. Didn't notice how time was
slipping."

Over the soup, Freddie was still a prey to gloom. For once the healing
gin-and-vermouth had failed to do its noble work. He sipped sombrely,
so sombrely as to cause comment from his host.

"Pipped?" enquired Algy solicitously.

"Pretty pipped," admitted Freddie.

"Backed a loser?"

"No."

"Something wrong with the old tum?"

"No.... Worried."

"Worried?"

"About Derek."

"Derek? Who's...? Oh, you mean Underhill?"

"Yes."

Algy Martyn chased an elusive piece of carrot about his soup plate,
watching it interestedly as it slid coyly from the spoon.

"Oh?" he said, with sudden coolness. "What about him?"

Freddie was too absorbed in his subject to notice the change in his
friend's tone.

"A dashed unpleasant thing," he said, "happened yesterday morning at
my place. I was just thinking about going out to lunch, when the
door-bell rang and Barker said a chappie of the name of Mason would
like to see me. I didn't remember any Mason, but Barker said the
chappie said he knew me when I was a kid. So he loosed him into the
room, and it turned out to be a fellow I used to know years ago down
in Worcestershire. I didn't know him from Adam at first, but gradually
the old bean got to work, and I placed him. Wally Mason his name was.
Rummily enough, he had spoken to me at the Leicester that