Unfortunately for Fenton, it was his enemy the
Secretary who spoke first.
"Heroics are all very well," he sneered, "but they don't change facts.
He's evidently played poker enough to know how to bluff in good shape."
There was a rustle of impatience in the room. The men seemed to be
reminded that a very high tone had been taken with them, and that they
had all come in for a share of the rebuke which Fenton had
administered. They were irritated by the mingling of a secret
concurrence with the artist's position that a member of the club should
not be impeached on the testimony of a servant, and the conviction that
Fenton was really guilty of the charge brought against him, so that it
was contrary to both justice and common sense to allow him to escape on
a mere technicality.
"Fenton is so hot-headed," Mr. Staggchase began; and then he added: "I
can't say that I blame him so very much, though. I don't fancy I should
be very amiable myself if I were brought up on the word of one of the
servants."
"But it was the duty of the servant to inform me," the Secretary
returned doggedly, "and why shouldn't the committee take action on
information which comes to it that way as well as any other. We didn't
set the servant to spy on the members, and I can't for the life of me
follow anything so fine spun as Fenton's theory. He only set it up, in
my opinion, to get himself out of a bad box.
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