"I say, sir, I think Joan got that Dunhill number wrong after all--I'll swear there's latakia on this--don't tell Joan though--this is _entrez nous_."
_Entrez nous!_ Between you and I! O modest flower tossed to the welcoming hands of the Entente!
Why did I not say straight out to him, "Look here, my young friend, this is all extremely interesting, but what I don't understand is why you shoot a man and then carry his picture on your wrist. In plain English, now, why did you shoot him--always supposing you did?"
Well, I was trying to put myself in his place--trying to picture a friendship such as he had had with this wistful, self-effacing young fatalist whose picture I had just handed back to him. I have told you how the more poignant of these experiences between man and man have been denied me; a flying-friendship I could never by any possibility have had; but I could reach out to it in my fancy. I could imagine with what fierce jealousy I should have guarded a treasure so rich. Not a word, not a breath from outside would I have suffered with regard to it. It was not a question of mere impertinence. It was rather one of the violation of a sacred place.
And it seemed to me that I now owed him no less than I would have claimed for myself. It made no difference that he was twenty-four and I within hand's-reach of fifty. Less than an hour had swept these conventions aside, and thenceforward he was entitled to the full honors of friendship and respect. He might tell me what he chose. Ply him with questions, however, I could not.
Nay, it even seemed to me now that I should have to drop my point before Philip also. However much I had been put on my mettle by those discoveries I had made on that Sunday afternoon in his studio, to drag them up again now would merely be to attack Chummy at one remove. If I could not have it from himself I could hardly have it at all, and the Case, which had unfolded as a conjuror's pilule unfolds into a flagrant and morbid-hued passion-flower, looked like shutting itself up again and being as if it had never been.
Yet the discoveries of that Sunday had been much on my mind. Especially that gold ring that had once belonged to Audrey Cunningham had been on my mind. That the circumstances in which I had found it were directly connected with the rupture between her and Monty I could hardly doubt, and several times, as a mere man, I had been on the point of confessing my share in the incident to Mollie Esdaile.