Finally Humphrey took out his pipe and spoke. His voice, too, was low and uncertain. But he gathered control of it as he went on.
'Me? Why, over at Rockwell Park. Bob McGibbon wanted me to see about a regular correspondent for the "Rockwell Park Doings."'
'Me? No. Why?... Hump, what is it? What you getting at?'
'Then I've got to tell you.' He swung his feet around; sat up; emptied his pipe, then filled it.
'I'm trying to, Hen. It's dam' unpleasant. You remember--you told me once--early in the summer--' Humphrey, usually most direct, was having difficulty in getting it out--'you told me you rode a tandem up to Hoffmann's Garden with that little Wilcox girl.'
'Oh, that! That was nothing. Why all the time I lived at Mrs Wilcox's I never----'
'Yes, I know. Let me try to tell this, Hen. It's hard enough. She's in a scrape. That girl. There's a big row on. I'm not going into the details, so far as I've heard 'em. There ugly. They wouldn't help. But her mother's collapsed. Her uncle and aunt have turned up and taken the girl off somewhere. He's a butcher on the North Side.' Henry was pale but attentive.
'In all the time I lived there,' he began again...
'Please, Hen! Wait! It is one of those mean scandals that tear up a town like this every now and then. Boils up through the crust and has to be noticed. It's a beastly thing. The number of men involved... some older ones... and young Bancroft Widdicombe has left town. There's some queer talk about her marrying him. And they say one or two others have run away. Widdicombe got out before the storm broke. Jim Smith says he's been heard from at San Francisco.'
'What can you prove? What chance will you have to prove anything? You were disturbed when Martha Caldwell and the party with Charles H. Merchant caught you with her up at Hoffmann's----'
'But, Hump, I didn't _want_ to take her out that night! And it's the only time I ever really talked to her except once or twice in the boarding-house.'
He was speaking with less energy now. He felt the blow. Not as he would feel it a few hours later; but he felt it.
'It has brought things home to me,' he said uncertainly. 'The sort of thing that can happen. When you're caught in a drift, you don't think, of course... Now, Hen, listen! This is real trouble. It's going to hit you about to-morrow--full force. It's got to be faced. I don't want to think that you'd run----'