"That is what it is." "What?" "A ghastly joke." Beaupré looked up at me. I don't know what he saw in my face, but a funny look came on his own--a look almost of fear. "Sometimes, Townsend, I don't know if you're a man or a devil." "The devil was a sublimated sort of man, and I expect he still is. This coffee is just a trifle too sweet." It was my second cup. I was sitting up in bed and stirring it. "Of course, you have done nothing." He said "Of course"; but I saw he was uneasy. "Of course, I have." "Townsend!" The man gave quite a jump. He brought the back of his head with a bump against the wall, without seeming to notice it. "I hope, as I said, on Thursday to have the pleasure of returning the Honour of the Club with its scarlet a more vivid hue." He was glaring at me as if I had been some sort of hideous wild animal. "You don't mean that you have killed some one?" "Certainly. What else should I mean? Though I don't perceive that there is any necessity for you to announce it from the tiles." He staggered to a chair, plumping down in it with the stiffening all gone out of him. I laughed. "My dear Archie, you had better have another drink. You don't seem quite the thing." He looked me straight in the face, I giving him look for look. When he had sustained my glance for a moment or two he shut his eyes and shivered. I saw a shudder go all over him. I drank my coffee. "You're sure that you're not joking?" "Some men joke most when they are most in earnest. Perhaps I am one of them." "Who was it?" "A little girl I knew." "A girl? My gracious! When was it?" "Sunday evening." He turned to me with a sort of gasp. "Was it near Three Bridges Station?" "Within half a mile." "My God! It's in the paper! Townsend, what have you done?" "It is in the paper, is it? May I ask what is in the paper?" "They've found the body." He sprang from the chair. "Reggie, I wish that I had died before you did this thing, and before ever I heard of that accursed club." "That is rather good, from you--the club having been a suggestion of your own." "I had been on the drink, hadn't I? I was mad. I swear, before the living God, that I never dreamed that you fellows would take the thing up in bitter earnest." "My dear Archie, respect the proprieties, if you respect nothing else--not quite that sort of language, if you please." He stared at me and laughed--a queer laugh it was. "You remember the rule which directs what course the members shall pursue towards a colleague who, for any cause, turns tail and rats. That also, I believe, was a suggestion of your own." "Are you afraid that I shall turn tail and rat? You need have no fear. That I shall never do, especially now. If we are to go to the devil, we'll all travel the same road. But there is one thing on which I do insist. I insist on your ceasing your connection with the Jardines." "You insist?" "I beseech you, then."