“I’m afraid there is no point in our discussing the matter. Will you please go?”

“Certainly I’ll go. If that’s how you take it, I’m sorry I ever came. It’s typical of the world,” he said, rising huffily. “Everyone’s all over you till you get into a spot of trouble. It’s ‘good old Arthur’ while you’re in funds. Then, when you need a pal it’s ‘you overrate my good nature, Mr. Atwater.’”

I followed him across the room, but before we reached the door his mood had changed. “You don’t understand,” he said. “They may send me to prison for this. That’s what happens in this country to a man earning his living. If I’d been driving my own Rolls-Royce they’d all be touching their caps. ‘Very regrettable accident,’ they’d be saying. ‘Hope your nerves have not been shocked, Mr. Atwater’—but to a poor man driving a two seater… Mr. Plant, your father wouldn’t have wanted me sent to prison.”

“He often expressed his belief that all motorists of all classes should be treated as criminals.”

Atwater received this with disconcerting enthusiasm. “And he was quite right,” he cried in louder tones than can ever have been used in that room except perhaps during spring-cleaning. “I’m fed to the teeth with motor-cars. I’m fed to the teeth with civilization. I want to farm. That’s a man’s life.”

“Mr. Atwater, will nothing I say persuade you that your aspirations are no concern of mine?”

“There’s no call to be sarcastic. If I’m not wanted, you’ve only to say so straight.”

“You are not wanted.”

“Thank you,” he said. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

I got him through the door, but halfway across the front hall he paused again. “I spent my last ten bob on a wreath.”

“I’m sorry you did that. I’ll refund it.”

He turned on me with a look of scorn. “Plant,” he said, “I didn’t think it was in you to say a thing like that. Those flowers were a sacred thing. You wouldn’t understand that, would you? I’d have starved to send them. I may have sunk pretty low, but I have some decency left, and that’s more than some people can say even if they belong to posh clubs and look down on fellows who earn a decent living. Good-bye, Plant. We shall not meet again. D’you mind if I don’t shake hands.”

That was how he left me, but it was not the last of him. That evening I was called to the telephone to speak to a Mr. Long. Familiar tones, jaunty once more, greeted me. “That you, Plant? Atwater here. Excuse the alias, won’t you. I say, I hope you didn’t take offence at the way I went off today. I’ve been thinking, and I see you were perfectly right. May I come round for another yarn?”

“No.”

“Tomorrow, then?”

“No.”

“Well, when shall I come?”

“I’m afraid I can’t see you.”

“No, I quite understand, old man. I’d feel the same myself. It’s only this. In the circumstances I’d like to accept your very sporting offer to pay for those flowers. I’ll call round for the money if you like or will you send it?”

“I’ll send it.”

“Care of the Holborn Post Office finds me. Fifteen bob, they cost.”

“You said ten this afternoon.”

“Did I? I meant fifteen.”

“I will send you ten shillings. Good-bye.”

“Good scout,” said Atwater.

So I put a note in an envelope and sent it to the man who killed my father.

Time dragged; April, May, the beginning of June. I left my club and visited my Uncle Andrew for an uneasy week; then back to the club. I took the manuscript of Murder at Mountrichard Castle to the seaside, to an hotel where I once spent three months in great contentment writing The Frightened Footman: they gave me the best suite, at this time of year, for five guineas a week. The forlorn, out-of-season atmosphere was just as I knew it—the shuttered ballroom, the gusts of rain on the roof of the “sun lounge,” the black esplanade, the crocodiles of private-school boys on their way to football, the fanatical bathers hissing like ostlers as they limped over the shingle into the breakers; the visitors’ high church, the visitors’ low church, and the church of the residents—all empty. Everything was as it had been three years before, but in a week I was back in London with nothing written. It was no good until I got things settled, I told myself; but “getting things settled” merely meant waiting until the house was sold and the lawyers had finished with the will. I took furnished rooms in Ebury Street and waited there, my thoughts more and more turning towards the country and the need of a house there, a permanent home of my own possession. I began to study the house-agents’ advertisements on the back page of The Times. Finally I notified two or three firms of my needs, and was soon amply supplied with specifications and orders-to-view.

During this time I received a call from young Mr. Godley of Goodchild and Godley. There was nothing at all artistic about young Mr. Godley. He looked and spoke like a motor salesman; his galleries were his “shop” and their contents “stuff” and “things.” He would have seemed at ease, if we had met casually, but the long preamble of small talk—references to mutual acquaintances, holiday resorts abroad, sport, politics, a “first-class man for job lots of wine”—suggested uncertainty; he was trying to decide how to take me. Finally he came to the point.

“Your father used to do a certain amount of work for us, you know.”

“I know.”

“Restorations mostly. Occasionally he used to make a facsimile for a client who was selling a picture to America and wanted one to take its place. That kind of work.”

“Often they were his own compositions.”

“Well, yes, I believe a few of them were. What we call in the trade ‘pastiche,’ you know.”

“I saw some of them,” I said.

“He was wonderfully gifted.”

“Wonderfully.”

A pause. Mr. Godley twiddled his Old Harrovian tie. “His work with us was highly confidential.”

“Of course.”

“I was wondering—our firm was, whether you had been through his papers yet. I mean, did he keep any records of his work or anything of the kind?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t been through his things yet. I should think it quite likely. He was very methodical in some ways.”

“The papers are all in your own hands?”

“So far as I know.”

“If anything of the kind was to turn up, we could rely on your discretion. I mean it would do no one any good… I mean you would want your father to be remembered by his exhibited work.”

“You need not worry,” I said.

“Splendid. I was sure you would understand. We had a spot of unpleasantness with his man.”

“Jellaby?”

“Yes. They both came to see us, husband and wife, immediately after the accident. You might almost say they tried to blackmail us.”

“Did you give them anything?”

“No. Goodchild saw them and I imagine he gave them a good flea in the ear. They had nothing to go on.”

“Odd pair the Jellabys.”

“I don’t think we shall be worried by them again.”

“Nor by me. Blackmail is not quite in my line.”

“No, no, my dear fellow, of course, I didn’t for a moment mean to suggest… Ha, ha, ha.”

“Ha, ha, ha.”

“But if anything should turn up…”

“I shall be discreet about it.”

“Or any studies for the paintings he did for us.”

“Anything incriminating,” I said.

“Trade secrets,” said Mr. Godley.

“Trade secrets,” I repeated.

That was almost the only amusing incident in my London season.

The sale of the house in St. John’s Wood proved more irksome than I had expected. Ten years before the St. John’s Wood Residential Amenities Company who built the neighbouring flats had offered my father £6,000 for his freehold; he had preserved the letter, which was signed, “Alfred Hardcastle, Chairman.” Their successors, the Hill Crest Court Exploitation Co., now offered me £2,500; their letter was also signed Mr. Hardcastle. I refused, and put the house into an agent’s hands; after two months they reported one offer—of £2,500 from a Mr. Hardcastle, the managing director of St. John’s Wood Residential Estates Ltd. “In the circumstances,” they wrote, “we consider this a satisfactory price.” The circumstances were that no one who liked that kind of house would tolerate its surroundings; having dominated the district, the flats could make their own price. I accepted it and went to sign the final papers at Mr. Hardcastle’s office, expecting an atmosphere of opulence and bluster; instead, I found a modest pair of rooms, one of the unlet flats at the top of the building; on the door were painted the names of half a dozen real estate companies and the woodwork bore traces of other names which had stood there and been obliterated; the chairman opened the door himself and let me in. He was, as my father had supposed, a Jew; a large, neat, middle-aged, melancholy, likeable fellow, who before coming to business, praised my father’s painting with what I believe was complete sincerity.