My tone was so firm that it startled them.  They glanced at each other with alarmed eyes, like simple people confronted by an inexplicable phenomenon.  ‘But look here, mister!’ said Mr Colclough, pained, ’we’ve got this out specially for you.  You don’t suppose this is our usual tipple, do you?’

I yielded.  I could do no less than sacrifice myself to their enchanting instinctive kindness of heart.  ’I shall be dead tomorrow,’ I said to myself; ‘but I shall have lived tonight.’  They were relieved, but I saw that I had given them a shock from which they could not instantaneously recover.  Therefore I began with a long pull, to reassure them.

‘Mrs Brindley has been telling me that Simon Fuge is dead,’ said Mrs Colclough brightly, as though Mrs Brindley had been telling her that the price of mutton had gone down.

I perceived that those two had been talking over Simon Fuge, after their fashion.

‘Oh yes,’ I responded.

‘Have you got that newspaper in your pocket, Mr Loring?’ asked Mrs Brindley.

I had.

‘No,’ I said, feeling in my pockets; ’I must have left it at your house.’

‘Well,’ she said, ’that’s strange.  I looked for it to show it to Mrs Colclough, but I couldn’t see it.’

This was not surprising.  I did not want Mrs Colclough to read the journalistic obituary until she had given me her own obituary of Fuge.

‘It must be somewhere about,’ I said; and to Mrs Colclough:  ’I suppose you knew him pretty well?’

‘Oh, bless you, no!  I only met him once.’

‘At Ilam?’

‘Yes.  What are you going to do, Oliver?’

Her husband was opening the piano.

‘Bob and I are just going to have another smack at that Brahms.’

‘You don’t expect us to listen, do you?’

‘I expect you to do what pleases you, missis,’ said he.  ’I should be a bigger fool than I am if I expected anything else.’  Then he smiled at me.  ’No!  Just go on talking.  Ol and I’ll drown you easy enough.  Quite short!  Back in five minutes.’

The two men placed each his wine-glass on the space on the piano designed for a candlestick, lighted cigars, and sat down to play.

‘Yes,’ Mrs Colclough resumed, in a lower, more confidential tone, to the accompaniment of the music.  ’You see, there was a whole party of us there, and Mr Fuge was staying at the hotel, and of course he knew several of us.’

‘And he took you out in a boat?’

’Me and Annie?  Yes.  Just as it was getting dusk he came up to us and asked us if we’d go for a row.  Eh, I can hear him asking us now!  I asked him if he could row, and he was quite angry.  So we went, to quieten him.’  She paused, and then laughed.

‘Sally!’ Mrs Brindley protested.  ‘You know he’s dead!’