Bramble sat down and began to sob. Mr. Bramble shuffled his feet.
"Talking of Harold," said Mr. Bramble at last, "that's really what I'm driving at. It was him really what I was thinking of when I hopped it from the White Hart. There's a good deal in what Perce says about men of wrath and the primrose path and all, but it was Harold that really made me do it. It hadn't hardly struck me till Perce pointed it out, but this fight with Jimmy Murphy, being as you might say a kind of national affair, in a way of speaking, was likely to be written up in all the papers, instead of only in the sporting ones. As likely as not, there would be a piece about it in the Mail, with a photograph of me. And you know Harold reads his Mail regular. And then, don't you see, the fat would be in the fire. That's what Percy pointed out to me, and I seen what he meant, so I hopped it."
"At the eleventh hour," added the major, rubbing in the point.
"You see, Jane" Mr. Bramble was beginning, when there was a knock at the door, and a little, ferret-faced man in a woollen sweater and cycling knickerbockers entered, removing as he did so a somewhat battered bowler hat.
"Beg pardon, Mrs. Bramble," he said, "coming in like this. Found the front door on the jar, so came in to ask if you'd happened to have seen"
He broke off and stood staring wildly at the little group.
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"I thought so!" he said, and shot through the air towards Percy.
"Jerry!" said Bill.
"Mr. Fisher!" said Mrs. Bramble.
"Be reasonable," said the major, diving underneath the table and coming up the other side like a performing seal.
"Let me get at him," begged the intruder, struggling to free himself from Bill's restraining arms.
