“Hullo, you old country hawbuck,” he said, with spasmodic jocularity; “I’m uncommon glad to see you.”  He came to a jerky close, with an indrawing of his breath.  “I’m about done,” he went on.  “Same old thing—­sciatica.  Took me just after I got here this afternoon; sent out one of the messengers to buy me a sofa, and here I’ve been ever since.  Well, and what’s brought you up—­don’t answer, I know all about it.  I’ve got to keep on talking until this particular spasm’s over, or else I shall scream and disturb the flow of Soane’s leader.  Well, and now you’ve come, you’ll stop and help me to put the Hour to bed, won’t you?  And then you can come and put me to bed.”

He went on talking at high pressure, exaggerating his expressions, heightening his humorous touches with punctuations of rather wild laughter.  At last he came to a stop with a half suppressed “Ah!” and a long indrawing of the breath.

“That’s over,” he said.  “Give me a drop of brandy—­there’s a good fellow.”  I gave him his nip.  Then I explained to him that I couldn’t work for the Hour; that I wasn’t on terms with de Mersch.

“Been dropping money over him?” he asked, cheerfully.  I explained a little more—­that there was a lady.

“Oh, it’s that,” Fox said.  “The man is a fool ...  But anyhow Mersch don’t count for much in this particular show.  He’s no money in it even, so you may put your pride in your pocket, or wherever you keep it.  It’s all right.  Straight.  He’s only the small change.”

“But,” I said, “everyone says; you said yourself....”

“To be sure,” he answered.  “But you don’t think that I play second fiddle to a bounder of that calibre.  Not really?”

He looked at me with a certain seriousness.  I remembered, as I had remembered once before, that Fox was a personality—­a power.  I had never realised till then how entirely—­fundamentally—­different he was from any other man that I knew.  He was surprising enough to have belonged to another race.  He looked at me, not as if he cared whether I gave him his due or no, but as if he were astonished at my want of perception of the fact.  He let his towzled head fall back upon the plush cushions.  “You might kick him from here to Greenland for me,” he said; “I wouldn’t weep.  It suits me to hold him up, and a kicking might restore his equilibrium.  I’m sick of him—­I’ve told him so.  I knew there was a woman.  But don’t you worry; I’m the man here.”

“If that’s the case ...”  I said.

“Oh, that’s it,” he answered.

I helped him to put the paper to bed; took some of the work off his hands.  It was all part of the getting back to life; of the resuming of rusty armour; and I wanted to pass the night.  I was not unused to it, as it happened.  Fox had had several of these fits during my year, and during most of them I had helped him through the night; once or twice for three on end.  Once I had had entire control