Lucas shut the door between the principals’ room and the pupils’ room.

“I say,” said Lucas importantly.  “I’ve got a show on to-night.  Women.  Cafe Royal.  I want a fourth.  You must come.”

“Yes,” sneered George.  “And what about my exam., I should like to know....  Besides, I can’t.”

The Final was due to begin on Thursday.

“That’s all right,” Lucas answered, with tact.  “That’s all right.  I’d thought of the exam., of course.  You’ll have to-morrow to recover.  It’ll do you all the good in the world.  And you know you’re more than ready for the thing.  You don’t want to be overtrained, my son.  Besides, you’ll sail through it.  As for ‘can’t,’ ‘can’t’ be damned.  You’ve got to.”

A telegraph boy, after hesitating at the empty cubicle, came straight into the room.

“Name of Cannon?”

George nodded, trembling.

The telegram read: 

“Impossible to-day.—­MARGUERITE.”

It was an incredible telegram, as much by what it said as by what it didn’t say.  It overthrew George.

“Seven forty-five, and I’ll drive you round,” said Lucas.

“Tis well,” said George.

Immediately afterwards Mr. Enwright summoned Lucas.

IV

The two young men of fashion were silent that evening as they drove to the Cafe Royal in the car which Lucas loosely called ‘my car,’ but which was his mother’s and only to be obtained by him upon his own conditions after delicate diplomacies.  The chief of his conditions was that the chauffeur should not accompany the car.  Lucas, having been engaged upon outdoor work for the firm, had not seen George throughout the day.  Further, he was late in calling for George, and therefore rather exacerbated in secret; and if George had not been ready and waiting for him at the club trouble might have arisen.  George understood his host’s mood and respected it.  Lucas drove rapidly and fiercely, with appropriate frowns and settings of cruel teeth; his mien indeed had the arrogance of the performer who, having given only a fraction of his time to the acquirement of skill, reckons that he can beat the professional who has given the whole of his time.  Lucas’s glances at chauffeurs who hindered his swiftness were masterpieces of high disdain, and he would accelerate, after circumventing them, with positive ferocity.

George himself, an implacable critic, could not find fault with the technique of Lucas’s driving.  But exacerbation tells, even in the young, and at Piccadilly Circus, Lucas, in obeying a too suddenly uplifted hand of a policeman, stopped his engine.  The situation, horribly humiliating for Lucas and also for George, provided pleasure for half the chauffeurs and drivers in Piccadilly Circus, and was the origin of much jocularity of a kind then fairly new.  Lucas cursed the innocent engine, and George leapt down to wield the crank.  But the engine, apparently resenting curses, refused to start again.  No, it would not start.  Lucas leapt down too.  “Get out of the way,” he muttered savagely to George, and scowled at the bonnet as if saying to the engine:  “I’m not going to stand any of your infernal nonsense!” But still the engine refused to start.