'Naturally, or you wouldn't be here.'

The answer was intended to be jocular; it sounded only _gauche_, as Drake
recognised, and the laugh which accompanied it positively rude.

'Shall I put my coat in the cloak-room?' suggested Mallinson.

'Oh yes, do!' replied Drake. He was inclined to look upon the proposal as
an inspiration, and his tone unfortunately betrayed his thought.

When Mallinson returned, he saw Conway entering the hotel. The latter
looked younger by some years than either of his companions, so that, as
the three men stood together at this moment, they might have been held to
represent three separate decades.

'Twenty minutes late, I'm afraid,' said Conway, and he shook Drake's hand
with a genuine cordiality.

'Five,' said Drake, looking at his watch.

'Twenty,' replied Conway. 'A quarter to, was the time Mallinson
wired me.'

'Was it?' asked Mallinson, with a show of surprise. 'I must have made
a mistake.'

It occurred, however, to Drake that the mistake might have been
purposely made from a prevision of the awkwardness of the meeting. The
dinner, prefaced inauspiciously, failed to remove the awkwardness, since
the reticence under which Drake and Mallinson laboured, gradually spread