“And Phyllis?”

“She is a loyal little soul and as miserable as can be.  She’s deplorably in love with Randall.  She has told me so.  And because she’s in love with a man whom she knows to be a slacker she’s eaten up with shame.  Now she won’t speak to him To avoid meeting him she lives entirely at the hospital—­a paying probationer.”

“That must be since the last Committee Meeting,” I said.

’Yes.”

“And Daniel Gedge pays a guinea a week?”

“He doesn’t,” said Betty.  “I do.”

I accepted the information with a motion of the head.  She went on after a minute or so.  “I have always been fond of the child”—­ there were only three or four years difference between them!—­ “and so I want to protect her.  The time may come when she’ll need protection.  She has told me things—­not now—­but long ago—­which frightened her.  She came to me for advice.  Since then I’ve kept an eye on her—­as far as I could.  Her coming into the hospital helps me considerably.”

“When you say ‘things which frightened her,’ do you mean in connection with her father?”

Again the dark look in Betty’s eyes.

“Yes,” she said.  “He’s an evil, dangerous man.”

That was all I could get out of her.  If she had meant me to know the character of Gedge’s turpitude, she would have told me of her own accord.  But in our talk at the hospital she had hinted at blackmail—­and blackmailers are evil, dangerous men.

I went to see Sir Anthony about it.  Beyond calling him a damned scoundrel, a term which he applied to all pro-Germans, pacifists and half the Cabinet, he did not concern himself about Gedge.  Young Randall Holmes’s intimacy with the scoundrel seemed to him a matter of far greater importance.  He strode up and down his library, choleric and gesticulating.

“A gentleman and a scholar to hob-nob with a traitorous beast like that!  I know that he writes for a filthy weekly paper.  Somebody sent me a copy a few days ago.  It’s rot—­but not actually poisonous like that he must hear from Gedge.  That’s the reason, I suppose, he’s not in the King’s uniform.  I’ve had my eye on him for some time.  That’s why I’ve not asked him to the house.”

I told Sir Anthony of my interview with the young man.  He waxed wroth.  In a country with a backbone every Randall Holmes in the land would have been chucked willy-nilly into the army.  But the country had spinal disorders.  It had locomotor ataxy.  The result of sloth and self-indulgence.  We had the Government we deserved ...  I need not quote further.  You can imagine a fine old fox-hunting Tory gentleman, with England filling all the spaces of his soul, blowing off the steam of his indignation.

When he had ended, “What,” said I, “is to be done?”

“I’ll lay my horsewhip across the young beggar’s shoulders the next time I meet him.”

“Capital,” said I.  “If I were you I should never ride abroad except in my mayor’s gown and chain, so that you can give an official character to the thrashing.”