ss. From Yorkshire. Man named Browning. Very good fellow,
but erratic. Said he'd wait for me in the cab, and disappeared before I
could come down. Had an idea I should make him lose his train, I
suppose. Well, never mind him. Come along."

Max went with him in silence. Dudley had not only got back his usual
spirits, but seemed to be in a mood of loquacity and liveliness unusual
with him. When they got to the club, he ordered oysters and a bottle of
champagne, and drank much more freely than was his custom.

It was Max, the ne'er-do-weel, the extravagant one, who drank little and
did the listening. Dudley had cast off altogether the gravity and
taciturnity which sometimes got him looked upon as a bit of a prig, and
chatted and told his friend stories, with a tone and manner of
irresponsible gayety which became him ill.

And Max, who was usually the talker, listened as badly as the other told
his stories. For all the time he was weighed down with the fear, so
strong that it seemed to amount to absolute knowledge, of some horrible
danger hanging over his friend.

Abruptly, before he made the expected comment on the last of Dudley's
stories, Max rose from his chair and said he must go home.

"I'll see you as far as your diggings first," said he. "It's not much
out of way, you know."

At these words Dudley's high spirits suddenly left him, and the furtive
look came again into his face.

"Oh," said he, "oh, very well. And on the way I can tell you the whole
story of the accident that I saw at Charing Cross, this evening, just
before I met you."

So they went out together, and Dudley, as he had suggested, gave his
friend a long and extremely circumstantial account of the way in which
the wheel went over the woman, and of the difficulty he and the
policeman had experienced in getting her from between the wheels of the
van by which she had been crushed.

Max heard him in silence, but did not believe a word. Whatever had
reduced Dudley to the plight in which he had returned to his chambers,
Max was convinced that it differed in some important details from the
version of the affair which he chose to give.

"We won't talk any more about it," he went on, without seeming to remark
his friend's silence. "It's a thing I want to forget. It has quite upset
me for a time; you could see that yourself when you met me. I--I don't
know quite what to do to get the thing out of my mind. I think I shall
run down to Datton with you, a