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Port Scatho said:

'I know; I know...Lady Port Scatho and I agreed--even without knowing what you have just told me--that the poor things almost exaggerated it...He slept, of course, at Jedburgh?

Tietjens said:

'Yes! They almost exaggerated it...I had to be called in to take Mrs Duchemin home...It caused, apparently, misunderstandings...'

Port Scatho--full of enthusiasm at the thought that at least two unhappy victims of the hateful divorce laws had, with decency and circumspectness, found the haven of their desires--burst out:

'By God, Tietjens, if I ever hear a man say a word against you...Your splendid championship of your friend...Your...your unswerving devotion...'

Tietjens said:

'Wait a minute, Port Scatho, will you?' He was unbuttoning the flap of his breast pocket.

'A man who can act so splendidly in one instance,' Port Scatho said...'And your going to France...If any one...if any one...dares...

At the sight of a vellum-coloured, green-edged book in Tietjens' hand Sylvia suddenly stood up; as Tietjens took from an inner flap a cheque that had lost its freshness she made three great strides over the carpet to him.

'Oh, Chrissie!...' she cried out. 'He hasn't...That beast hasn't...'

Tietjens answered:

'He has...' He handed the soiled cheque to the banker. Port Scatho looked at it with slow bewilderment.

'"Account overdrawn,"' he read. 'Brownie's...my nephew's handwriting...To the club...It's...'

'You aren't going to take it lying down?' Sylvia said. 'Oh, thank goodness, you aren't going to take it lying down'

'No! I'm not going to take it lying down,' Tietjens said. 'Why should I?' A look of hard suspicion came over the banker's face.

'You appear,' he said, 'to have been overdrawing your account. People should not overdraw their accounts. For what sum are you overdrawn?'

Tietjens handed his pass-book to Port Scatho.

'I don't understand on what principle you work,' Sylvia said to Tietjens. 'There are things you take lying down; this you don't.'

Tietjens said:

'It doesn't matter, really. Except for the child.'

Sylvia said:

'I guaranteed an overdraft for you up to a thousand pounds last Thursday. You can't be overdrawn over a thousand pounds.'

'I'm not overdrawn at all,' Tietjens said. 'I was for about fifteen pounds yesterday. I didn't know it.'

Port Scatho was turning over the pages of the passbook, his face completely blank.

'I simply don't understand,' he said. 'You appear to be in credit...You appear always to have been in credit except for a small sum now and then. For a day or two.'

'I was overdrawn,' Tietjens said, 'for fifteen pounds yesterday. I should say for three or four hours: the course of a post, from my army agent to your head office. During these two or three hours your bank selected two out of six of my cheques to dishonour--both being under two pounds. The other one was sent back to my mess at Ealing, who won't, of course, give it back to me. That also is marked "account overdrawn," and in the same handwriting.'

'But good God,' the banker said. 'That means your ruin.'

'It certainly means my ruin,' Tietjens said. 'It was meant to.

'But,' the banker said--a look of relief came into his face which had begun to assume the aspect of a broken man's--'you must have other accounts with the bank...a speculative one, perhaps, on which you are heavily down...I don't myself attend to clients' accounts, except the very huge ones, which affect the bank's policy.'

'You ought to,' Tietjens said. 'It's the very little ones you ought to attend to, as a gentleman making his fortune out of them. I have no other account with you. I have never speculated in anything in my life. I have lost a great deal in Russian securities--a great deal for me. But so, no doubt, have you.'

'Then...betting!' Port Scatho said.

'I never put a penny on a horse in my life,' Tietjens said. 'I know too much about them.'

Port Scatho looked at the faces first of Sylvia, then of Tietjens. Sylvia, at least, was his very old friend.