ichard staggering to his feet. "You rotten
blasted swine. Aren't you satisfied with what you've done--isn't it
enough that you make the nights into a hell for me--a screaming hell.
Sleep? How can I sleep? How can I sleep when----"

A violent, paroxysm of coughing seized and shook him this way and that.

"Tut, tut, tut! You haf a very bad cold there," said Tan Diest
sweetly. "You must eat one of these lozenges."

Richard struck the box out of the hand that proffered it and fell
heaped up into a chair beside the table.

"No pleasure to us you stay awake, eh, Laurence, eh?"

"'Course not. Now don't look at me like that, old fellar, I was
thundering decent to you when first you arrived. Barring smoke,
literature and alcohol it was a home from home. It's your own pigeon
things have got a bit tight. Doesn't pay striking out against the
odds."

"You little rat," said Richard turning a bit in his chair. "I'd
like----" and he closed his fist.

"Silly talk, old chap, waste of time."

"I could waste a lot of time that way."

Laurence humped his shoulders.

"What are you to do with a fellar like this?"

Van Diest drew up a chair and smiled over the rims of his glasses.

"Of course we let you go to sleep if you waas sensible. Consider now
the small shareholders that look to us for their little incomes. All
these widows from the war. You speak and you wass a rich man all at
once. Very soon forget the discomforts of these three weeks. S'no
goot--no goot to make a fuss."

"I have nothing to say."

"Ach!" said Van Diest and rose. "I'm afraid, Laurence, we must take
away this bed."

But Richard raised no further protest and somewhere below stairs a gong
rumbled for lunch. It was part of the programme to emphasise the
arrival of meals and in spite of himself he could not resist starting
hungrily. Such signs and tokens were watched for. Laurence laid a
hand on his shoulder and whispered:

"There's a fourth place laid, old friend."

"Why not join us to the lunch," said Van Diest coaxingly, "just a word
spoken and--oh, it's goot the lunch."

"Thanks, but I'm rather particular who I sit with," said Richard and
moved unsteadily toward the fireplace.

"It's rather a special menu," Laurence remarked. "There's a lobster
Americaine--that was in Hipps' honour. But perhaps you don't care for
shellfish, Barraclough."

"No, no, thank you. Prefer a Spartan diet. Glass of water and a piece
of bread."