ake form
and substance.

"I asked him, 'What reasons, Sabre?' and he said, 'Oh, I don't know. The
war; and being out there; and thinking about the death of an old woman I
attended once; and things I picked up from a slip of a girl; and things
from a woman I know--oh, all sorts of things, Hapgood; and I tell you
what chiefly--loneliness, my God, loneliness....'

"I didn't say anything. What could I say? When a chap suddenly rips a
cry out of his heart like that, what the devil can you say if you weigh
fourteen stone of solid contentment and look it? You can only feel you
weren't meant to hear and try to look as if you hadn't.

"Well, anyway, time came for me to go and I went. Sabre stayed where he
was. Would I mind leaving him up there? It was so seldom he got up; and
talking with me had brought back old feelings he thought he'd never
recapture again, and he was going to see if he couldn't start in and do
a bit of writing again. So I pulled out and left him; and that was old
Sabre as I saw him two months ago; and one way and another I thought a
good deal coming back in the train of what I had seen. Those sort of
ideas in his head and that sort of life with his wife. D'you remember
my telling you years--oh, years ago--that he looked like a chap who'd
lost something and was wondering where he'd put it? Well, the Sabre I
left down there two months ago had not only lost it, but knew it was
gone for good and all. That was Sabre--except when the pink got under
his skin when he got talking.

"All right. All right. Now that's just the prologue. That's just what
you're supposed to know before the Curtain goes up. Now, am I going on
to the drama or are we going to bed.... The drama? Right. You're a lewd
fellow of the baser sort, but you occasionally have wise instincts.
Right. The drama."

CHAPTER II

I

Continued Hapgood:

"All right. That was two months ago. Last week I was down at Tidborough
again. Felt I'd got rather friendly with old Sabre on my last visit so
as soon as I could toddled off to the office to look him up. Felt quite
sure he'd be back there again by now. But he wasn't. He wasn't, and when
I began inquiring for him found there seemed to be some rummy mystery
about his absence. Like this. Some sort of a clerk was in the shop as I
went in. 'Mr. Sabre upstairs, eh?' I asked. 'No. No, Mr. Sabre's
not--not here,' says my gentleman, with rather an odd look at me.

"'What, not still laid up, is he?'