reat coat and muffler and looking
cold. When he rose and faced him, Denis saw that he also looked paler
than of old, and thinner, and less perfectly shaved, and his hair was
longer. He might have been called seedy-looking; he might have been
Sidney Carton in "The Only Way"; he had always that touch of the dramatic
about him that suggested a stage character. He had a bad cough.

"Oh," said Urquhart, polite and feeling embarrassed; "how do you do? I'm
sorry to have kept you waiting; they didn't tell me who it was. Sit down,
won't you?"

Hilary said thanks, he thought not. He had a keen sense of the fit. So
he refused the cigarette Urquhart offered him, and stood by the fire,
looking at the floor. Urquhart stood opposite him, and thought how ill
and how little reputable he looked.

Hilary said, in his high, sweet, husky voice, "It is no use beating about
the bush. I want help. We are in need; we are horribly hard up, to put it
baldly. That has passed between your family and mine which makes you the
last person I should wish to appeal to as a beggar. I propose a business
transaction." He paused to cough.

Urquhart, feeling impatient at the prospect of a provoking interview when
he wanted to be playing bridge, said "Yes?" politely.

"You," said Hilary, "are intending to stand as a candidate for this
constituency. You require for that, I fancy, a reputation wholly
untarnished; the least breath dimming it would be for you a disastrous
calamity. I have some information which, if sent to the local Liberal
paper, would seriously tell against you in the public mind. It is here."

He took it out of his breast pocket and handed it to Urquhart--a
type-written sheet of paper. He must certainly have been to a provincial
theatre lately; he had hit its manners and methods to a nicety, the silly
ass.

Urquhart took the paper gingerly and did not look at it.

"Thanks; but ... I don't know that I am interested, do you know. Isn't
this all rather silly, Mr. Margerison?"

"If you will oblige me by reading it," said Mr. Margerison.

So Urquhart obliged him. It was all about him, as was to be expected;
enough to make a column of the Berkshire Press.

"Well?" said Hilary, when he had done.

"Well," said Urquhart, folding up the paper and returning it, "thank
you for showing it me. But again I must say that I am not particularly
interested. Of course you will send anything you like to any paper you
like; it is no business of mine. T