“Mrs. Crocker is in her room, Mr. James.  She ordered the car to be brought round at once.  It should be here at any moment now, sir.  I think Mrs. Crocker intends to visit the Park before luncheon.”

“Is she lunching out?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then, if I pursue the excellent common-sense tactics of the lesser sand-eel, which as you doubtless know buries itself tail upwards in the mud on hearing the baying of the eel-hounds and remains in that position till the danger is past, I shall be able to postpone an interview.  Should you be questioned as to my whereabouts, inflate your chest and reply in a clear and manly voice that I have gone out, you know not where.  May I rely on your benevolent neutrality, Bayliss?”

“Very good, Mr. James.”

“I think I will go and sit in my father’s den.  A man may lie hid there with some success as a rule.”

Jimmy heaved himself painfully off the sofa, blinked, and set out for the den, where his father, in a deep arm-chair, was smoking a restful pipe and reading the portions of the daily papers which did not deal with the game of cricket.

Mr. Crocker’s den was a small room at the back of the house.  It was not luxurious, and it looked out onto a blank wall, but it was the spot he liked best in all that vast pile which had once echoed to the tread of titled shoes; for, as he sometimes observed to his son, it had the distinction of being the only room on the ground floor where a fellow could move without stubbing his toe on a countess or an honourable.  In this peaceful backwater he could smoke a pipe, put his feet up, take off his coat, and generally indulge in that liberty and pursuit of happiness to which the Constitution entitles a free-born American.  Nobody ever came there except Jimmy and himself.

He did not suspend his reading at his son’s entrance.  He muttered a welcome through the clouds, but he did not raise his eyes.  Jimmy took the other arm-chair, and began to smoke silently.  It was the unwritten law of the den that soothing silence rather than aimless chatter should prevail.  It was not until a quarter of an hour had passed that Mr. Crocker dropped his paper and spoke.

“Say, Jimmy, I want to talk to you.”

“Say on.  You have our ear.”

“Seriously.”

“Continue—­always, however, keeping before you the fact that I am a sick man.  Last night was a wild night on the moors, dad.”

“It’s about your stepmother.  She was talking at breakfast about you.  She’s sore at you for giving Spike Dillon lunch at the Carlton.  You oughtn’t to have taken him there, Jimmy.  That’s what got her goat.  She was there with a bunch of swells and they had to sit and listen to Spike talking about his half-scissors hook.”

“What’s their kick against Spike’s half-scissors hook?  It’s a darned good one.”

“She said she was going to speak to you about it.  I thought I’d let you know.”