be
amiable.

"Excuse me, Havelock. Of course, whatever drove a man like Ferguson to
suicide is interesting. And I may say he managed it awfully well. Not a
hint, anywhere."

"Well, a scientist ought to get something out of it for himself.
Ferguson certainly knew how. Can't you imagine him sitting up there,
cocking his hair" (an odd phrase, but Chantry understood), "and deciding
just how to circumvent the coroner? I can."

"Ferguson hadn't much imagination."

"A coroner doesn't take imagination. He takes a little hard, expert
knowledge."

"I dare say." But Chantry's mind was wandering through other defiles.
"Odd, that he should have snatched his life out of the very jaws of
what-do-you-call-it, once, only to give it up at last, politely, of his
own volition."

"You may well say it." Havelock spoke with more earnestness than he had
done. "If you're not a socialist when I get through with you, Chantry,
my boy--"

"Lord, Lord! don't tell me your beastly socialism is mixed up with it
all! I never took to Ferguson, but he was no syndicalist. In life _or_
in death, I'd swear to that."

"Ah, no. If he had been! But all I mean is that, in a properly regulated
state, Ferguson's tragedy would not have occurred."

"So it was a tragedy?"

"He was a loss to the state, God knows."

Had they been speaking of anything less dignified than death and genius,
Havelock might have sounded a little austere and silly. As it
was--Chantry bit back, and swallowed, his censure.

"That's why I want to know what you think," went on Havelock,
irrelevantly. "Whether your damned code of honor is worth Ferguson."

"It's not my damned code any more than yours," broke in Chantry.

"Yes, it is. Or, at least, we break it down at different
points--theoretically. Actually, we walk all round it every day to be
sure it's intact. Let's be honest."

"Honest as you like, if you'll only come to the point. Whew, but it's
hot! Let's have a gin-fizz."

"You aren't serious."

Havelock seemed to try to lash himself into a rage. But he was so big
that he could never have got all of himself into a rage at once. You
felt that only part of him was angry--his toes, perhaps, or his
complexion.

Chantry rang for ice and lemon, and took gin, sugar, and a siphon out of
a carved cabinet.

"Go slow," he said. He himself was going very slow, with a beautiful
crystal decanter which he set lovingly on the oaken table. "Go slow," he
repeated, more easily, w