"I may have news for you," said Mr. Kirby.
Brassington looked at him doubtfully, and he was gone.
Hardly was his friend out of the room when Mr. Kirby, with something of the gesture that a dog with a good nose will make when he is getting interested, made for the writing table, and noted the appointment.
"Before I forget it," he murmured. "Wednesday, the Rockingham, five—and dinner 's seven. I wish I hadn't had to make a day in such a hurry—but it 'll serve … I can always change it," he thought.
Then he visualised young McAuley quite carefully and clearly. He did these sort of things better when his eyes were fixed upon a glare. He gazed, therefore, hard at a sunlit white wall in a court opposite the club window, and as he did so he saw McAuley again quite clearly. The fresh, vigorous, young Celtic face with its dark and sincere eyes. … And he wondered who on earth could have taken that young man in! Then he sighed a little, and said to himself, aloud—
"But it 's easy to believe anything for two thousand pound?"
Mr. Kirby left the smoking-room. On his way out through the hall he did something
