here should we be then--hey? Your
governor wouldn't settle a gambling debt, would he?"

This was too true. Scaife grinned diabolically. He knew that
Beaumont-Greene's father was endeavouring to establish a credit-account
with the Recording Angel. Originally a Nonconformist, he had joined
the Church of England after he had made his fortune (cf. _Shavings from
the Workshops of our Merchant Princes_, which appeared in the pages of
"Prattle"). Then, the famous inventor of the Imperishable Boot had
taken to endowing churches; and he published pamphlets denouncing drink
and gambling, pamphlets sent to his son at Harrow, who (with an eye to
backsheesh) had praised his sire's prose somewhat indiscreetly.

"You shall have your confounded money," said Beaumont-Greene, violently.

"Thanks," said Scaife, sweetly. "When we asked you to join us" (slight
emphasis on the "us"), "we knew that we could rely on you to settle
promptly."

The Demon grinned for the third time, knowing that he had touched a
weak spot; not a difficult thing to do, if you touched the big fellow
at all. A young man of spirit would have told his creditors to go to
Jericho. Beaumont-Greene might have said, "You have skinned me a bit.
I don't whine about that; I mean to pay up; but you'll have to wait
till I have the money. I'm stoney now." Scaife and Lovell must have
accepted this as an ultimatum. But Beaumont-Greene's wretched pride
interfered. He had posed as a sort of Golden Youth. To confess
himself pinchbeck seemed an unspeakable humiliation.

Men have been known to take to drink under the impending sword of
dishonour. Beaumont-Greene swallowed instead large quantities of food
at the Creameries; and then wrote to his father, saying that he would
like to have a cheque for thirty pounds by return of post. He was
leaving Harrow, he pointed out, and he wished to give his friends some
handsome presents. Young Desmond, for instance, the great minister's
son, had been kind to him (Beaumont-Greene prided himself upon this
touch), and Scaife, too, he was under obligations to Scaife, who would
be a power by-and-by, and so forth. . . . To confess frankly that he
owed thirty pounds gambled away at cards required more cheek than our
stout youth possessed. His father refused to play bridge on principle,
because he could never remember how many trumps were out.

The father answered by return of post, but enclosed no cheque. He
pointed out to his dea