Marriott thought, stealing a glance at
him from behind the cupboard door. He did not like yet to take a full
square look. The fellow was in a bad way, and it would have been so like
an examination to stare and wait for explanations. Besides, he was
evidently almost too exhausted to speak. So, for reasons of
delicacy--and for another reason as well which he could not exactly
formulate to himself--he let his visitor rest apparently unnoticed,
while he busied himself with the supper. He lit the spirit lamp to make
cocoa, and when the water was boiling he drew up the table with the good
things to the sofa, so that Field need not have even the trouble of
moving to a chair.

"Now, let's tuck in," he said, "and afterwards we'll have a pipe and a
chat. I'm reading for an exam, you know, and I always have something
about this time. It's jolly to have a companion."

He looked up and caught his guest's eyes directed straight upon his own.
An involuntary shudder ran through him from head to foot. The face
opposite him was deadly white and wore a dreadful expression of pain and
mental suffering.

"By Gad!" he said, jumping up, "I quite forgot. I've got some whisky
somewhere. What an ass I am. I never touch it myself when I'm working
like this."

He went to the cupboard and poured out a stiff glass which the other
swallowed at a single gulp and without any water. Marriott watched him
while he drank it, and at the same time noticed something else as
well--Field's coat was all over dust, and on one shoulder was a bit of
cobweb. It was perfectly dry; Field arrived on a soaking wet night
without hat, umbrella, or overcoat, and yet perfectly dry, even dusty.
Therefore he had been under cover. What did it all mean? Had he been
hiding in the building? . . .

It was very strange. Yet he volunteered nothing; and Marriott had pretty
well made up his mind by this time that he would not ask any questions
until he had eaten and slept. Food and sleep were obviously what the
poor devil needed most and first--he was pleased with his powers of
ready diagnosis--and it would not be fair to press him till he had
recovered a bit.

They ate their supper together while the host carried on a running
one-sided conversation, chiefly about himself and his exams and his "old
cat" of a landlady, so that the guest need not utter a single word
unless he really wished to--which he evidently did not! But, while he
toyed with his food, feeling no desire to ea