As Mr. Philpotts entered the smoking-room, these were the words--with additions--which fell upon his, not unnaturally, startled ears. Since Mr. Bloxham was the only person in the room, it seemed only too probable that the extraordinary language had been uttered by him--and, indeed, his demeanour went far to confirm the probability. He was standing in front of his chair, staring about him in a manner which suggested considerable mental perturbation, apparently unconscious of the fact that his cigar had dropped either from his lips or his fingers and was smoking merrily away on the brand-new carpet which the committee had just laid down. He turned to Mr. Philpotts in a state of what seemed really curious agitation. "I say, Philpotts, did you see him?" Mr. Philpotts looked at him in silence for a moment, before he drily said, "I heard you." But Mr. Bloxham was in no mood to be put off in this manner. He seemed, for some cause, to have lost the air of serene indifference for which he was famed--he was in a state of excitement, which, for him, was quite phenomenal. "No nonsense, Philpotts--did you see him?" "See whom?" Mr. Philpotts was selecting a paper from a side table. "I see your cigar is burning a hole in the carpet." "Confound my cigar!" Mr. Bloxham stamped on it with an angry tread. "Did Geoff Fleming pass you as you came in?" Mr. Philpotts looked round with an air of evident surprise. "Geoff Fleming!--Why, surely he's in Ceylon by now." "Not a bit of it. A minute ago he was in that chair talking to me." "Bloxham!" Mr. Philpotts' air of surprise became distinctly more pronounced, a fact which Mr. Bloxham apparently resented. "What are you looking at me like that for pray? I tell you I was glancing through the _Field_, when I felt someone touch me on the shoulder. I looked round--there was Fleming standing just behind me. 'Geoff.' I cried, 'I thought you were on the other side of the world--what are you doing here?' 'I've come to have a peep at you,' he said. He drew a chair up close to mine--this chair--and sat in it. I turned round to reach for a match on the table, it scarcely took me a second, but when I looked his way again hanged if he weren't gone." Mr. Philpotts continued his selection of a paper--in a manner which was rather marked. "Which way did he go?" "Didn't you meet him as you came in?" "I did not--I met no one. What's the matter now?" The question was inspired by the fact that a fresh volley of expletives came from Mr. Bloxham's lips. That gentleman was standing with his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets, his legs wide open, and his eyes and mouth almost as wide open as his legs. "Hang me," he exclaimed, when, as it appeared, he had temporarily come to the end of his stock of adjectives, "if I don't believe he's boned my purse." "Boned your purse!" Mr. Philpotts laid a not altogether flattering emphasis upon the "boned!" "Bloxham! What do you mean?"