“Ass! blockhead!  You know no better than to let such a man in his state of health get mixed up m a crowd of roughs at midnight?  Good God!  He may die!”

“I shouldn’t wonder a bit,” returned Gammon coolly.  “If he does it may be awkward for you, eh?”

From his story he had omitted one detail, thinking it better to keep silence about the burning of the will until he learnt more than Greenacre had as yet avowed to him.

“Fool!” blustered the other.  “Idiot!”

“You’d better stop that, Greenacre, or I shan’t be the only man with a black eye.  Do you want to be kicked downstairs? or would you prefer to drop out of the window?  Keep a civil tongue in your head.”

At this moment both were startled into silence by a violent thumping at the wall.

It came from the room which used to be occupied by Polly Sparkes, and was accompanied by angry verbal remonstrance from a lodger disturbed in his slumbers.

“Didn’t I tell you?” muttered Gammon.  “You’d better get home and go to bed; the walk will cool you down.  It’s all up with your little game for the present.  Look here,” he added in a friendly whisper, “you may as well tell me.  Has he another wife?”

“Find out,” was Greenacre’s surly answer; “and go to the devil!”

A rush, a scuffling, a crash somewhere which shook the house.  The disturbed lodger flung open his door and shouted objurgations.  From below sounded the shrill alarm of Mrs. Bubb, from elsewhere the anxious outcries of Mrs. Cheeseman and her husband.

Amid all this Greenacre and his quondam friend somehow reached the foot of the stairs, where the darkness that enveloped their struggle was all at once dispersed by a candle in the hand of Mrs. Bubb.

“Don’t alarm yourself,” shouted Gammon cheerily, “I’m only kicking this fellow out.  No one hurt.”

“Well, Mr. Gammon, I do think—­”

But the landlady’s protest was cut short by a loud slamming of the house-door.

“It’s nothing,” said the man of commerce, breathing hard.  “Very sorry to have disturbed you all.  It shan’t happen again.  Good night, Mrs. Bubb.”

He ran up to his room, laughed a good deal as he undressed, and was asleep five minutes afterwards.  Before closing his eyes he said to himself that he must rise at seven; business claimed him tomorrow, and he felt it necessary to see Mrs. Clover (or Lady Polperro) with the least possible delay.  However tired, Gammon could always wake at the hour he appointed.  The dark, snowy morning found him little disposed to turn out; he had something of a headache, and a very bad taste in the mouth; for all that he faced duty with his accustomed vigour.  Of course he had to leave the house without breakfast, but a cup of tea at the nearest eating-house supplied his immediate wants, and straightway he betook himself to the china shop near Battersea Park Road.