Page:Hornung - Fathers of Men.djvu/351

 believed the worst himself, but in a tone of excuse for those who did.

Jan could only stare. His unsociability had been due of course to his unpopularity with his Eleven, his estrangement from Evan, and his delicacy about falling back on Chips. And even Chips could not see that for himself, but saw if anything with the other idiots! This was too much for Jan; it made him look more embittered than was wise if he still wished to be taken as the only villain of the piece. But the fact was that for the moment he was forgetting to act.

"Solitary drinking!" he ejaculated. "Bad case, isn't it?"

"It isn't a case at all," returned Chips, looking him in the face. "I don't believe a word of the whole thing! Even if it's true that you went out to Yardley to meet Mulberry"

"Who says that?"

"Oh, it's one of the things that's got about. But I can jolly well see that if you did go to meet him it wasn't on your own account!"

Confound old Chips! He was looking as if he could fairly see into a fellow's skull, and very likely making a fellow look in turn as big a fool as he felt!

"Of course you know more about it than I do!" sneered Jan, desperately. "But do you suppose I'd do a thing like that for anybody but myself?"

"I believe you'd do a jolly sight more," replied Chips, "for Evan Devereux!"

Jan made no reply beyond an unconvincing little laugh; of plain denial he looked as incapable as he actually was, in his surmise at so shrewd a thrust.

"The whole thing was for Devereux!" pursued Carpenter with explosive conviction. "What about him