“Friends in common?” the old man repeated. “You mean, I suppose, Mr. Solent, to ask whether your father and I had any peculiarities in common? That’s a natural question, and if I knew you better I think I could interest you a good deal in answering it. But we don’t know each other well enough, Sir⁠ ⁠… not nearly well enough. Besides”⁠—and once more Wolf got the benefit of that fixed, monomaniacal gaze⁠—“I don’t approve of exposing a father to his son. It’s an impiety, an impiety!”

Wolf finished his tea in silence after this, and handed Mr. Malakite a cigarette. When they were both smoking, and Wolf, at any rate, was enjoying that faint rarification of human thought, like the distilling of an essence, which tea-drinking can induce, he asked Mr. Malakite with grave directness what was the matter with the landlord of Farmer’s Rest.

The bookseller’s forehead knit in an unpleasant scowl.