foot and chucked away. Do you know what I am,
Hapgood--?'

"He gave a laugh. He wasn't talking a bit savagely, and he never
did talk like that all through what he told me. He was just
talking in a tone of sheer, hopeless, extremely interested
puzzlement--bafflement--amazement; just as a man might talk to you of
some absolutely baffling conjuring trick he'd seen. In fact, he used
that very expression. 'Do you know what I am, Hapgood?' and he gave a
laugh, as I've said. 'I'm what they call a social outcast. A social
outcast. Beyond the pale. Unspeakable. Ostracized. Blackballed.
Excommunicated.' He got up and began to stump about the room, hands in
his pockets, chin on his collar, wrestling with it,--and wrestling,
mind you, just in profoundly interested bafflement.

"'Unspeakable,' he said. 'Excommunicated. By Jove, it's astounding. It's
amazing. It's like a stupendous conjuring trick. I've done something
that isn't done--not something that's wrong, something that's
incontestably right. But it isn't done. People don't do it, and I've
done it and therefore hey, presto, I'm turned into a leper, a pariah, an
outlaw. Amazing, astounding!'

"Then he settled down and told me. And this is what he told me."

II

"When he was out in France this girl I'd seen--this Effie, as he called
her, Effie Bright--had come to live as companion to his wife. It appears
he more or less got her the job. He'd seen her at the office with her
father and he'd taken a tremendous fancy to her. 'A jolly kid,' that was
the expression he used, and he said he was awfully fond of her just as
he might be of a jolly little sister. He got her some other job
previously with some friends or other, and then the old lady there died
and the girl came to his place while he was away. Something like that.
Anyway, she came. She came somewhere about October, '15, and she left
early in March following, just over a year ago. His wife got fed up with
her and got rid of her--that's what Sabre says--got fed up with her and
got rid of her. And Sabre was at home at the time. Mark that, old man,
because it's important. _Sabre was at home at the time_--about three
weeks--on leave.

"Very well. The girl got the sack and he went back to France. She got
another job somewhere as companion again. He doesn't quite know where.
He thinks at Bournemouth. Anyway, that's nothing to do with it. Well,
he got wounded and discharged from the Army, as you know, and in
February he was