“On the contrary.  His home was a matter of three or four miles distant.  He was merely stopping at the Morrison’s on that particular night; I’ll tell you presently why and how he came to do that.  For the present, let’s take things in their proper order.  Once upon a time this George Carboys occupied a fair position in the world, and his parents—­long since dead—­were well to do.  The son, being an only child, was well looked after—­sent to Eton and then to Brasenose, and all that sort of thing—­and the future looked very bright for him.  Before he was twenty-one, however, his father lost everything through unlucky speculations, and that forced the son to make his own living.  At the ’Varsity he had fallen in with a rich young Belgian—­fellow named Maurice Van Nant—­who had a taste for sculpture and the fine arts generally, and they had become the warmest and closest of friends.”

“Maurice Van Nant?  That’s the sculptor fellow you said in the beginning had gone through his money, isn’t it?”

“Yes.  Well, when young Carboys was thrown on the world, so to speak, this Van Nant came to the rescue, made a place for him as private secretary and companion, and for three or four years they knocked round the world together, going to Egypt, Persia, India, et cetera, as Van Nant was mad on the subject of Oriental art, and wished to study it at the fountain-head.  In the meantime both Carboys’ parents went over to the silent majority, and left him without a relative in the world, barring Captain Morrison, who is an uncle about seven times removed and would, of course, naturally be heir-at-law to anything he left if he had anything to leave, poor beggar, which he hadn’t.  But that’s getting ahead of the story.

“Well, at the end of four years or so Van Nant came to the bottom of his purse—­hadn’t a stiver left; and from dabbling in art for pleasure, had to come down to it as a means of earning a livelihood.  And he and Carboys returned to England, and, for purposes of economy, pooled their interests, took a small box of a house over Putney way, set up a regular ‘bachelor establishment,’ and started in the business of bread-winning together.  Carboys succeeded in getting a clerk’s position in town; Van Nant set about modelling clay figures and painting mediocre pictures, and selling both whenever he could find purchasers.

“Naturally, these were slow in coming, few and far between; but with Carboys’ steady two pounds a week coming in, they managed to scrape along and to keep themselves going.  They were very happy, too, despite the fact that Carboys had got himself engaged to Miss Morrison, and was hoarding every penny he could possibly save in order to get enough to marry on; and this did not tend to make Van Nant overjoyed, as such a marriage would, of course, mean the end of their long association and the giving up of their bachelor quarters.”

“To say nothing of leaving Van Nant to rub along as best he could without any assistance from Carboys,” commented Cleek.  “I think I can guess a portion of what resulted, Mr. Narkom.  Van Nant did not, of course, in these circumstances have any tender regard for Miss Morrison.”