‘You’re his heir. You quarrelled with him. You’ve been in debt. You are sharing rooms with a man against whom he warned you. You’re in no position to try and save your face over smaller matters. You want to spare your mother as much as possible, don’t you? Of course you do, and so do I. I ask you most earnestly as a friend, which I should not do, to tell me the whole truth.’

‘Very well,’ said Donald.

‘You’re living in the same flat as Captain Withers. What have you been doing there?’

‘I—we—I was waiting to see if I couldn’t perhaps go to Thomas’s, after all.’

‘How could you afford to do that?’

‘My mother would have helped me. I’ve got my prelim, and I thought if I read a bit and tried to earn a bit, later on I could start.’

‘How did you propose to earn a bit?’

‘Wits was helping me—Captain Withers, I mean. He’s been perfectly splendid. I don’t care what anybody says about him, he’s not a crook.’

‘What suggestions did he make?’

Donald fidgeted.

‘Oh, nothing definite. We were going to talk it over.’

‘I see. Is Captain Withers doing a job of work himself?’

‘Well, not exactly. He’s got a pretty decent income, but he’s thinking of doing something one of these days. He hates being idle, really.’

‘Will you tell me, please, why you were in debt to him for fifty pounds?’

‘I—simply owed it to him.’

‘Evidently. For what? Was it a bet?’

‘Yes. Well, one or two side bets, actually.’

‘On what—horses?’

‘Yes,’ said Donald quickly.

‘Anything else?’

Silence.

‘Anything else?’

‘No. I mean … I can’t remember exactly.’

‘You must remember. Was it at poker? Cards of any sort?’

‘Yes, poker.’

‘There’s something else,’ said Alleyn. ‘Donald, I can’t exaggerate the harm you may do if you insist on hedging with us. Don’t you see that with every fresh evasion you put your friend in an even more dubious light than the one in which he already appears? For God’s sake think of your uncle’s death and your mother’s sensibilities and your own foolish skin. How else did you lose money to Captain Withers?’

Alleyn watched Donald raise his head, knit his brows, and put his fingers to his lips. His eyes were blank but they were fixed on Alleyn’s and presently an expression of doubtful astonishment crept into them.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said naïvely.

‘You mean you owe something to Withers. You have made some promise, I suppose. Is that it?’

‘Yes.’