r, rather, it should be said
that he watched his own hand, and when he saw that it was quite steady
he set down the wine untasted.

"Paradise Street? I never go down there. I wasn't in Mangadone that
night," his face was dead white with a sick, leprous whiteness. "If
Heath said he saw me, Heath was wrong."

"Heath didn't say so," said Hartley. "It was the policeman on duty at
the corner who said that he had seen you."

"I tell you I wasn't in the place," said Joicey again.

Hartley coughed awkwardly.

"Well, if you weren't there, you weren't there," he said, pacifically.

"And Heath, what did Heath say?"

"I told you he said nothing, except that he had seen Absalom. I can't
understand this business, Joicey; directly I ask the smallest question
about that infernal night of July the twenty-ninth I am always met in
just the same way."

"I know nothing about it," said Joicey, shortly. "I wasn't here and I
don't know what Heath was doing, so there's no use asking me questions
about him."

The Banker relapsed into his former dull apathy, and leaned back in his
chair.

"I've had insomnia lately," he said, after a perceptible pause. "It
plays the deuce with one's nerves. I believe I need a change. This
cursed country gets into one's bones if one stays out too long. I've
forgotten what England looks like and I've got over the desire to go
back there, and so I rot through the rains and the steam and the tepid
cold weather, and it isn't doing me any good at all."

They walked into the drawing-room, Hartley with his hand on Joicey's
shoulder. The Banker sat for a little time making a visible effort to
talk easily, but long before his usual hour for leaving he pulled out
his watch and looked at it.

"It may seem rude to clear off so soon, but I'm tired, Hartley, and
shall be much obliged if I may shout for my carriage."

He looked tired enough to make any excuse of exhaustion or ill-health
quite a valid one, and Hartley was concerned for his friend.

"Don't overdo it, Joicey," he said.

"Overdo what?"

Joicey got up with the heavy lift of an old, weary man, and yet there
was not two years between him and Hartley.

"The insomnia," said Hartley.

"Good night," replied Joicey shortly, and closed the carriage-door
behind him.

He drove along the dark roads, his arms in the window-straps and his
head bent forward. The head of the Mangadone Banking Firm was suffering,
if not from insomnia, from something that was