"Pleasantly unusual, Draymore. Is this a delegation to tend me the nomination for the down-and-out club, perhaps?" Fane spoke up languidly: "It rather looks as though we were the down-and-out delegation at present; doesn't it, Orchil?" "I don't know," said Orchil; "it seems a trifle more promising to me since I've had the pleasure of seeing Captain Selwyn face to face. Go on, Percy; let the horrid facts be known." "Well--er--oh, hang it all!" blurted out Draymore, "we heard last night how that fellow--how Neergard has been tampering with our farmers--what underhand tricks he has been playing us; and I frankly admit to you that we're a worried lot of near-sports. That's what this dismal matinee signifies; and we've come to ask you what it all really means." "We lost no time, you see," added Orchil, caressing the long pomaded ends of his kinky moustache and trying to catch a glimpse of them out of his languid oriental eyes. He had been trying to catch this glimpse for thirty years; he was a persistent man with plenty of leisure. "We lost no time," repeated Draymore, "because it's a devilish unsavoury situation for us. The Siowitha Club fully realises it, Captain Selwyn, and its members--some of 'em--thought that perhaps--er--you--ah--being the sort of man who can--ah--understand the sort of language we understand, it might not be amiss to--to--" "Why did you not call on Mr. Neergard?" asked Selwyn coolly. Yet he was taken completely by surprise, for he did not know that Neergard had gone ahead and secured options on his own responsibility--which practically amounted to a violation of the truce between them. Draymore hesitated, then with the brutality characteristic of the overfed: "I don't give a damn, Captain Selwyn, what Neergard thinks; but I do want to know what a gentleman like yourself, accidentally associated with that man, thinks of this questionable proceeding." "Do you mean by 'questionable proceeding' your coming here?--or do you refer to the firm's position in this matter?" asked Selwyn sharply. "Because, Draymore, I am not very widely experienced in the customs and usages of commercial life, and I do not know whether it is usual for an associate member of a firm to express, unauthorised, his views on matters concerning the firm to any Tom, Dick, and Harry who questions him." "But you know what is the policy of your own firm," suggested Harmon, wincing, and displaying his teeth under his bright red lips; "and all we wish to know is, what Neergard expects us to pay for this rascally lesson in the a-b-c of Long Island realty." "I don't know," replied Selwyn, bitterly annoyed, "what Mr. Neergard proposes to do. And if I did I should refer you to him." "May I ask," began Orchil, "whether the land will be ultimately for sale?" "Oh, everything's always for sale," broke in Mottly impatiently; "what's the use of asking that? What you meant to inquire was the price we're expected to pay for this masterly squeeze in realty."