hat man Harman."

"Not the International Stores and Staminal Bread man."

"Yes. Odd. Considering my hatred of his board."

"He ought to pay--anyhow," said Toomer. "They say he has a pretty wife
and keeps her shut up."

"She came," said Brumley, neglecting to add the trifling fact that she
had come alone.

"Pretty?"

"Charming, I thought."

"He's jealous of her. Someone was saying that the chauffeur has orders
not to take her into London--only for trips in the country. They live in
a big ugly house I'm told on Putney Hill. Did she in any way _look_--as
though----?"

"Not in the least. If she isn't an absolutely straight young woman I've
never set eyes on one."

"_He_," said Toomer, "is a disgusting creature."

"Morally?"

"No, but--generally. Spends his life ruining little tradesmen, for the
fun of the thing. He's three parts an invalid with some obscure kidney
disease. Sometimes he spends whole days in bed, drinking Contrexeville
Water and planning the bankruptcy of decent men.... So the party made a
knight of him."

"A party must have funds, Toomer."

"He didn't pay nearly enough. Blapton is an idiot with the honours. When
it isn't Mrs. Blapton. What can you expect when ---- ----"

(But here Toomer became libellous.)

Toomer was an interesting type. He had a disagreeable disposition
profoundly modified by a public school and university training. Two
antagonistic forces made him. He was the spirit of scurrility incarnate,
that was, as people say, innate; and by virtue of those moulding forces
he was doing his best to be an English gentleman. That mysterious
impulse which compels the young male to make objectionable imputations
against seemly lives and to write rare inelegant words upon clean and
decent things burnt almost intolerably within him, and equally powerful
now was the gross craving he had acquired for personal association with
all that is prominent, all that is successful, all that is of good
report. He had found his resultant in the censorious defence of
established things. He conducted the _British Critic_, attacking with a
merciless energy all that was new, all that was critical, all those
fresh and noble tentatives that admit of unsavoury interpretations, and
when the urgent Yahoo in him carried him below the pretentious dignity
of his accustomed organ he would squirt out his bitterness in a little
sham facetious bookstall volume with a bright cover and quaint woodcuts,
in which just a