“Oh!  I can soon persuade her.” said Charlie, lightly.

“But you couldn’t easily persuade me.  And I may as well inform you at once, my poor ingenuous boy, that I won’t agree.  I will never agree.  Miss Warburton is necessary to my existence.”

“All in two or three days, is she?” Charlie observed sarcastically.

“Yes.”

“Well, father, as we’re talking straight, let’s talk straight.  I’m going to take her from you.  It’s a very little help I’m asking you for, and that you should refuse is a bit thick.  I shall speak to the mater.”

“And what shall you say?”

“I shall tell her all about the plot against the new house.  It was really a plot against her, because she wants the house—­the house is nothing to me.  I may believe that you knew nothing about the plot yourself, but I’ll lay you any odds the mater won’t.”

“Speaking as man to man, my boy, I lay you any odds you can’t put your mother against me.”

“Oh!” cried Charlie, “she won’t say she believes you’re guilty, but she’ll believe it all the same.  And it’s what people think that matters, not what they say they think.”

“That’s wisdom,” Mr. Prohack agreed.  “I see that I brought you up not so badly after all.  But doesn’t it strike you that you’re trying to blackmail your father?  I hope I taught you sagacity, but I never encouraged you in blackmail—­unless my memory fails me.”

“You can call it by any name you please,” said Charlie.

“Very well, then, I will.  I’ll call it blackmail.  Give me a cigarette.”  He lit the offered cigarette.  “Anything else this morning?”

Father and son smiled warily at one another.  Both were amused and even affectionate, but serious in the battle.

“Come along, dad.  Be a sport.  Anyhow, let’s ask the girl.”

“Do you know what my answer to blackmail is?” Mr. Prohack blandly enquired.

“No.”

“My answer is the door.  Drop the subject entirely.  Or sling your adventurous book.”

Mr. Prohack was somewhat startled to see Charlie walk straight out of the bedroom.  A disturbing suspicion that there might be something incalculable in his son was rudely confirmed.

He said to himself:  “But this is absurd.”

III

That morning the Prohack bedroom seemed to be transformed into a sort of public square.  No sooner had Charlie so startlingly left than Machin entered again.

“Dr. Veiga, sir.”

And Dr. Veiga came in.  The friendship between Mr. Prohack and his picturesque quack had progressed—­so much so that Eve herself had begun to twit her husband with having lost his head about the doctor.  Nevertheless Eve was privately very pleased with the situation, because it proved that she had been right and Mr. Prohack wrong concerning the qualities of the fat, untidy, ironic Portuguese.  Mr. Prohack was delighted to see him, for an interview with Dr. Veiga always meant an unusual indulgence in the sweets of candour and realism.