"I think we
must toast the lady to whom we owe this very pleasant evening!" He
raised his glass, (they had worked back through brandy to champagne),
and cried, mock-heroically: "To the unknown Zoe."

"My word, yes," answered Geoffrey Alison with a fat laugh, "I'll drink
that!" He raised his glass and drank it off: no heeltaps.

The publisher had merely sipped the brim of his, but he filled up his
guest's. "I dare say, my boy!" he laughed cheerily. "I dare say you
will. I've my suspicions about you and Zoe."

"No, no," warmly retorted the other. He was so genial as to be nearly
truculent. "I won't let you say that." He was not quite so sure now
about Blatchley. "That's not right. She's a dam nice girl is Zoe, and
she's as innocent as anybody makes 'em. I'm very fond of her, I tell
you, and she's fond of me too." He pulled himself together in a very
doggy way. "But that's all there is. I won't have you having
suspicions. She doesn't know what all that means. I won't let you say
that, Blatchley. She never thinks of anybody but her husband, damn
him!" He looked very fierce indeed for a very few seconds: then he
chuckled feebly. Dam conceited idiot, that ass Brett....

"I see," answered his host vaguely. He was waiting.

The other's swiftly-changing moods veered, the next moment, to
suspicion. He gave a discordant laugh. "You're a clever swine,
Blatchley," he said, with a sudden longing to strike this man
flickering across the table.

"You thought I was tight! You thought I should give Zoe away. You
want to know who she is, don't you? But not much! I'm less of an ass
than you think, old man! Yes, that was it," he added in a sudden mood
of contemplative depression; "you thought I was tight." All his anger
had evaporated. It was a mere statement.

"Take more than that to make _you_ tight," said his host, relapsing
upon flattery as a safe weapon. He could afford to wait. They would
not be turned out yet for a while and he had learnt already that Zoe
was quite young, a girl. That ruled out many authors' wives....

But Geoffrey Alison was on his guard. An air of watchful cunning
settled on him. He saw the game now, in his own fuddled way, and he
did not mean to be drawn.

"Give it up, Blatchley, old man," he said so happily as not to be
offensive. "Give it up. You won't get anything from me. I'm less of
an ass than you think. You won't get anything from me."

He had flung his car