"Parrot-shooting's pretty good in those parts, they tell me,"
interjected Algy satirically.

"Don't interrupt, old man. This parrot had got out of one of the
houses, and a fellow was jabbing at it with a stick, and Jill--you
know what she's like; impulsive, I mean, and all that--Jill got hold
of the stick and biffed him with some vim, and a policeman rolled up
and the fellow made a fuss and the policeman took Jill and me off to
chokey. Well, like an ass, I sent round to Derek to bail us out, and
that's how he heard of the thing. Apparently he didn't think a lot of
it, and the result was that he broke off the engagement."

Algy Martyn had listened to this recital with growing amazement.

"He broke it off because of that?"

"Yes."

"What absolute rot!" said Algy Martyn. "I don't believe a word of it!"

"I say, old man!"

"I don't believe a word of it," repeated Algy firmly.

"And nobody else will either. It's dashed good of you, Freddie, to
cook up a yarn like that to try and make things look better for the
blighter, but it won't work. Such a damn silly story, too!" said Algy
with some indignation.

"But it's true!"

"What's the use, Freddie, between old pals?" said Algy protestingly.
"You know perfectly well that Underhill's a worm of the most
pronounced order, and that, when he found out that Jill hadn't any
money, he chucked her."

"But why should Derek care whether Jill was well off or not? He's got
enough money of his own."

"Nobody," said Algy judicially, "has got enough money of his own.
Underhill thought he was marrying a girl with a sizable chunk of the
ready, and, when the fuse blew out, he decided it wasn't good enough.
For Heaven's sake don't let's talk any more about the blighter. It
gives me a pain to think of him."

II

Freddie returned to the Albany in a state of gloom and uneasiness.
Algy's remarks, coming on top of the Wally Mason episode, had shaken
him. The London in which he and Derek moved and had their being is
nothing but a village, and it was evident that village gossip was
hostile to Derek. People were talking about him. Local opinion had
decided that he had behaved badly. Already one man had cut him.
Freddie blenched at a sudden vision of streetfuls of men, long
Piccadillys of men, all cutting him, one after the other. Something
had got to be done.

The subject was not an easy one to broach to his somewhat forbidding
friend, as he discovered when the latter arrived about