"To tell you the truth," said he, as if searching for something at the back of his mind, "I haven't thought it out quite accurately. It's near enough to warrant what preparations I'm making: but it hasn't the shape of a clean proposition--which is the shape my conscience demands. . . . Don't hurry me, Roddy: let me come around again to-morrow. . . . I can't invite you to my flat, because I'm making arrangements to shut it up, and these details get in the way, all the time. . . . Tell you what.--Meet me, you two, at Prince's Grill-room to-morrow, one-fifteen, and you shall have the plan of campaign on a half-sheet of notepaper. I'm a brute, Roddy, to bother you with these private affairs in the middle of your politics. But one-fifteen to-morrow, if you can manage. Sure? Right, then.-- So long!" He wagged, at the door, a benediction on us with his walking-stick and went down the stairs, I strolled to the window and watched him cross the turfed square of the court. Jimmy had taken up the poker and started raking the lower bars of the grate. "Queer how quietly the Professor takes it," began Jimmy. "I was half-afraid--Oh, drop it, Otty, old man--I'm sorry!" We had both wheeled about together, and I held a window cushion, poised, ready to hurl. "Of course I didn't mean that, really!" pleaded Jimmy, parrying with the poker-point. "Sit down and let's talk. Is he mad? . . . I don't like it." NIGHT THE NINTH. THE HUNT IS UP. Well, I thought it over, and talked it over with Jimmy, and decided that, much as I loved Jack Foe, he'd have to be more explicit with me before I undertook this stewardship. You will say that, this being the only decent decision open, I might have done without the thinking and the talking. . . . And that's true enough. But, you see, I had lived with Jack pretty long and pretty close, and this was the first time I'd ever taken a miss with him. If anyone for the past ten or fifteen years had suggested to me, concerning Jack Foe, that a day might come when I shouldn't know where to find him, I--well, I should have lost my temper. It was inconceivable, even now. I told myself that, though he had expressly given me leave to invite Jimmy to the breakfast, he had taken a fit of reticence in Jimmy's presence and had shied off; that I should get more out of him when we were alone together. . . . Is that good English, by the way? Can two persons be alone? . . . Thank you, Polkinghorne--of course they can when they're real friends. But that speculation wouldn't work, either: for again at Prince's, and again at Jack's invitation, we were to be a party of three. . . . I tell you of these doubts because through them, and (you may say) by way of them, it came to me--my first inkling that something was wrong with the man.