They both looked at Peter, and Urquhart’s brows rose a little, as if to say, “More Margerisons yet?”

Hilary said, “What’s the matter, Peter?  Why have you come?”

Peter said, rather faintly, “I meant to stop you before you saw Denis.  I suppose I’m too late....  I made Peggy tell me.  I found a paper, you see; and I asked Peggy, and she said you’d come down here to use it. Have you?”

“He has already done his worst,” Denis’s ironic voice answered for him.  “Sprung the awful threat upon me.”

Peter leant back against the door, feeling rather sick.  He had run all the way from the station; and, as always, he was too late.

Then he laughed a little.  The contrast of Hilary’s tragedian air and Urquhart’s tranquil boredom was upsetting to him.

Urquhart didn’t laugh, but looked at him enquiringly.

“It’s certainly funny rather,” he said quietly.  “You must have got a good deal of quiet fun out of compiling that column.”

“Oh,” said Peter.  “But I didn’t, you know.”

“I gather you helped—­supplied much of the information.  That story of the old man I brutally slew and then callously left uncared for on the road—­you seem to have coloured that rather highly in passing it on....  I suppose it was stupid of me to fancy that you weren’t intending to make that public property.  Not that I particularly mind:  there was nothing to be ashamed of in that business; but it somehow never happened to occur to me that you were relating it.”

“I didn’t,” said Peter.  “I have never told anyone.”

Urquhart said nothing; his silence was expressive.

Peter stammered into speech incoherently.

“At least—­at least—­yes, I believe I did tell Peggy the story, months ago, in Venice—­but I didn’t say it was you.  I merely said, if someone had done that ... what would she think?  I wanted to know if she thought we ought to have found the old man’s people and told them.”

“I see,” said Urquhart.  “And did she?”

“No.  She thought it was all right.”  Peter had known beforehand that Peggy would think it was all right; that was why he had asked her, to be reassured, to have the vague trouble in his mind quieted.

And she, apparently, had seen through his futile pretence, had known it was Urquhart he spoke of, needed reassuring about (Peter didn’t realise that even less shrewd observers than Peggy might easily know when it was Urquhart he spoke of) and had gone and told Hilary.  And Hilary, in his need, had twisted it into this disgusting story, and had typed it and brought it down to Astleys to-night, with other twisted stories.

“I suppose the rest too,” said Urquhart, “you related to your sister-in-law to see what she would think.”

Peter stammered, “I don’t think so.  No, I don’t believe anything else came from me.  Did it, Hilary?”

Hilary shrugged his shoulders, and made no other answer.