Abruptly, before he made the expected comment on the last of Dudley's stories, Max rose from his chair and said he must go home.
"I'll see you as far as your diggings first," said he. "It's not much out of way, you know."
At these words Dudley's high spirits suddenly left him, and the furtive look came again into his face.
"Oh," said he, "oh, very well. And on the way I can tell you the whole story of the accident that I saw at Charing Cross, this evening, just before I met you."
So they went out together, and Dudley, as he had suggested, gave his friend a long and extremely circumstantial account of the way in which the wheel went over the woman, and of the difficulty he and the policeman had experienced in getting her from between the wheels of the van by which she had been crushed.
Max heard him in silence, but did not believe a word. Whatever had reduced Dudley to the plight in which he had returned to his chambers, Max was convinced that it differed in some important details from the version of the affair which he chose to give.
"We won't talk any more about it," he went on, without seeming to remark his friend's silence. "It's a thing I want to forget. It has quite upset me for a time; you could see that yourself when you met me. I—I don't know quite what to do to get the thing out of my mind. I think I shall run down to Datton with you, and see what that will do. What do you think?"
Now, although he had drunk more wine than usual, Dudley knew perfectly well what he was saying, and Max stared at him in astonishment.
"What?" he exclaimed. "After what you told me? About my father?"
"Oh, yes, yes. But I can explain everything. I can, and I will," returned Dudley, quickly. "I have not been myself lately. I have had certain business worries. But they are all settled now, and I feel more like myself than I have done for weeks."
Max stopped short and stared at his friend by the light of a gas-lamp.
"Well, you don't look it," said he, shortly.
Dudley laughed loudly, but rather uneasily.
"Don't you think I could give an explanation which would satisfy your father, if I wished?" he asked, with a sudden relapse into gravity.
"I'm hanged if I know," retorted Max, energetically. "You haven't given any explanation which would satisfy me."
Dudley stared into his face for a few seconds inquiringly, and then quietly hooked his arm and led him along the Strand.
"You don't want to be satisfied, old chap," said he, in a low voice. "You know me."
Again Max was deeply touched. This was a sudden and unexpected peep under the surface of deception into the real heart of his old chum. He replied only by a slight twitching of the arm Dudley had taken.
They walked on at a quicker pace, and ran up the stairs to the door of Dudley's rooms in silence.
Dudley went first into the sitting-room and turned up the gas. It did not escape Max that he shot a hurried glance around the room, taking in every corner, as he entered. Talking all the time about the cold and the fog, Dudley went into the adjoining room, and Max saw him pull aside the bed-curtains and look behind them.
Then Max, not wishing to play the spy on his friend, turned his back; and as he did so he caught sight of the railway ticket which had fallen to the floor from Dudley's pocket before they went out.
Max picked it up, and noted that it was the return half of a first-class return ticket from Fenchurch Street to Limehouse, and that it was dated that very day.
He had scarcely noted this, mechanically rather than with any set purpose, when he was startled to find Dudley at his elbow.
Max turned round quickly, but Dudley's eyes were fixed upon the railway ticket.
"You dropped this when you—" began Max, handing it to his friend.
It was not until then, when Dudley took the ticket from him and tossed it into the fireplace with a careless nod, that it flashed into the mind of Max that the incident had some significance.
What on earth had Dudley been doing at Limehouse? His parents had had property there, certainly, many years ago. But not a square foot of the grimy, slimy, auriferous Thames-side land, not a brick or a beam of the warehouses and sheds which had been theirs in the old days, had descended to Dudley. Owing to the fraudulent action of Edward Jacobs, all had had to go.
CHAPTER IV.
A PARAGRAPH IN "THE STANDARD."
Max did not stay long with his friend, but made the excuse that he was half asleep, after a few minutes' rather desultory conversation, to go back to his hotel.
It was with the greatest reluctance that he left his friend alone; but Dudley had given him intimations, in every look and tone and movement, that he wished to be by himself; and this fact increased the heaviness of heart with which Max, full of forebodings on his friend's account, had gone reluctantly down the creaking stairs.
Again and again Max asked himself, during his short walk from Lincoln's Inn to Arundel Street, why he had not had the courage to put a question or two straightforwardly to Dudley. As a matter of fact, however, the reason was simple enough. The relative positions of the two men had been suddenly reversed, and neither of them, as yet, felt easy under the new conditions.
Dudley, the hard-working student, the rising barrister, the abstemious, thoughtful, rather silent man to whom Max had looked up with respect and affection, had suddenly sunk, during the last few hours, by some unaccountable and mysterious means, to far below Max's own modest level. It was he, the careless fellow whom Dudley had formerly admonished, who had that evening been the sober, the temperate, the taciturn one; it was he who had watched the other, been solicitous for him, trembled for him.
Max could not understand. He lay awake worrying himself about his friend, feeling Dudley's fall more acutely than he would have felt his own, and did not fall asleep until it was nearly daylight.
In these circumstances he overslept himself, and it was eleven o'clock before he found himself in the hotel coffee-room, waiting for his breakfast.
He was in the act of pouring out his coffee, when his name, uttered behind him in a familiar voice, made him start. The next moment Dudley Horne stood by his side, and holding out his hand with a smile, seated himself on the chair beside him.
"I—I—I overslept myself this morning," stammered Max.
He was in a state of absolute bewilderment. Not only had the new Dudley of the previous night disappeared, with his alternate depression and feverish high spirits, his furtive glances, his hoarse and altered voice, but the old Dudley, who had returned, seemed happier and livelier than usual.
"Town and its wicked ways don't agree with you, my boy, nor do they with me. If I were in your shoes, I shouldn't tread the streets of Babylon more than once a twelvemonth."
"You think that now," returned Max, "because you see more than enough of town."
"Well, I'm not going to see much more of it at present," retorted Dudley. "This afternoon I'm off again down to Datton, and I came to ask whether you were coming down with me."
"I thought you had had a row, at least a misunderstanding of some sort, with—with my father?"
"Why, yes, so I had," replied Dudley, serenely,