CHAPTER XXIV

THE TREASURE SEEKER

Gloom wrapped his lordship about, during dinner, as with a garment.
He owed twenty pounds. His assets amounted to seven shillings and
four-pence. He thought, and thought again. Quite an intellectual
pallor began to appear on his normally pink cheeks. Saunders,
silently sympathetic--he hated Sir Thomas as an interloper, and
entertained for his lordship, under whose father also he had served,
a sort of paternal fondness--was ever at his elbow with the magic
bottle; and to Spennie, emptying and re-emptying his glass almost
mechanically, wine, the healer, brought an idea. To obtain twenty
pounds from any one person of his acquaintance was impossible. To
divide the twenty by four, and persuade a generous quartette to
contribute five pounds apiece was more feasible.

Hope began to stir within him again.

Immediately after dinner, he began to flit about the castle like a
family specter of active habits. The first person he met was
Charteris.

"Hullo, Spennie," said Charteris, "I wanted to see you. It is
currently reported that you are in love. At dinner, you looked as if
you had influenza. What's your trouble? For goodness' sake, bear up
till the show's over. Don't go swooning on the stage, or anything.
Do you know your lines?"

"The fact is," said his lordship eagerly, "it's this way. I happen
to want--Can you lend me a fiver?"

"All I have in the world at this moment," said Charteris, "is eleven
shillings and a postage-stamp. If the stamp would be of any use to
you as a start--? No? You know, it's from small beginnings like that
that great fortunes are amassed. However--"

Two minutes later, Lord Dreever had resumed his hunt.

The path of the borrower is a thorny one, especially if, like
Spennie, his reputation as a payer-back is not of the best.

Spennie, in his time, had extracted small loans from most of his
male acquaintances, rarely repaying the same. He had a tendency to
forget that he had borrowed half-a-crown here to pay a cab and ten
shillings there to settle up for a dinner; and his memory was not
much more retentive of larger sums. This made his friends somewhat
wary. The consequence was that the great treasure-hunt was a failure
from start to finish. He got friendly smiles. He got honeyed
apologies. He got earnest assurances of good-will. But he got no
money, except from Jimmy Pitt.

He had approached Jimmy in the early stages of the hunt; and Jimmy,
being in