XLI.

That night Lord Ottercove slept at The Cottage, and the following night he spent in the country. It was not till he had got into bed on the third night and turned over on his left side that he was aware of the sound of rustling paper in his pyjama coat pocket, which, on inspection, proved to be a letter, a _billet doux_ from his Eva. She was, she wrote, with Christopher de Jones, who, as Rex probably knew, had gone off his chump and had disintegrated the world, which was unravelling rapidly of its own accord (“like a piece of crochet-work,” she wrote, “if you know what I mean, whose first stitch he has undone,”) and she had with difficulty persuaded him to isolate the top of a hill, which he said he could do by vaccinating it, so to speak, against the spreading corruption, to save her and himself, and she was now secretly indicating the exact location of that hill in the Austrian Alps whither he, Rex, should fly at once. He must not, however, bring anyone with him, as there would be very little to eat. “_I told Him I’d like to have you saved, but He won’t hear of it. I am furious. I told him all the Truth that I have written to you. And He is Furious. Never mind, darling, if I flirt with him perhaps He will not kill you. Your loving wife_

_Eva._”

Lord Ottercove never weighed or reflected: he knew. Light came to him without intermediaries, direct from the Holy Ghost. He must save himself _and Vernon Sprott_. Vernon Sprott was, since the death of a late Prime Minister, his oldest friend, and friendship was to Ottercove a pure and sacred thing. In other departments of life he had displayed a versatile ability, but in friendship he was a genius. No coldness, lack of response, animosity, or even treachery could dull his friendship. If he once liked a man, nothing that that man might do to him would stop his liking him. Equally, he would stop at nothing if he could render even the smallest service to a friend. Lord Ottercove was said to have made the war in order to oblige a friend whose special gifts, he thought, would find their happiest expression in a war cabinet. His tenderness in the cause of friendship knew no bounds. And so, entering hatless into his chariot, he muttered the address of Mr. Vernon Sprott.

But when, his heart thumping within him, he dragged himself up to Vernon’s study at the top of his house in Berkeley-square, Vernon Sprott was writing a novel. Vernon Sprott was invariably writing a novel. That was, according to the more esoteric critics, the special trouble with him. And the special trouble to-night was that Vernon Sprott would not stop writing the novel, hoping to finish, print, sell it, and retire on the proceeds before the world came to its final dissolution. Lord Ottercove beheld the broad industrious back of his friend, who made a slave of himself to keep afloat a large yacht, and said: “Vernon, you’re a writer of talent: but a merchant of genius.”

Vernon Sprott turned round on his chair. “You, Rex,” he said, looking at him with critical thoughtfulness, “who have cut such a figure in the visible world, why don’t you now turn your mind to the invisible mystery of things and solve, say, the Riddle of the Universe?”

Lord Ottercove pondered silently awhile. “I cannot solve it,” he said.

Mr. Vernon Sprott turned back to his desk.

Lord Ottercove looked at his friend with grave significance. He loved Vernon Sprott. All the music, all the poetry in the world was not so strong nor yet so pure as this devotion of the younger for the elder friend, and when he spoke of him his voice grew tender and tears came to his eyes. “Vernon!” he said at last. “I am going to save your life! For, you know, there’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we may. My chariot is at the door and” (looking at his watch) “we must fly.”

“Let me put the last stroke to my novel.”

“I advise you against it.”

“Why?”

“Vernon: it would do you no good.”

“But I must. No first-class artist--”

“Vernon: we must fly.”

Vernon Sprott, smoking a long fat cigar, followed Lord Ottercove critically into the chariot which, cutting sharply round the corner, took wing, and clearing the roofs of the Berkeley-square houses, soared into the sky. Lord Ottercove and Mr. Vernon Sprott beheld for the last time the great city of London which, viewed from this imposing height, looked as though it had been inadvertently dropped out of the back of a cart. An architectural effect that, though it was not premeditated, could hardly be called happy, thought Mr. Sprott. However. He puffed at his cigar. “Your secretary and telephone operator gone ahead, I expect?”

“Yuh. Can’t get on without them.”

They were now flying right into the dawn.