This man was suffering; he was suffering acutely; he was under enormous stress.

From the beginning he had an air of impersonating himself.

Presently, with a single gesture, the slightest movement, he revealed to Redwood that he was keeping himself up with drugs.

He moved a thumb to his waistcoat pocket, and then, after a few sentences more, threw concealment aside, and slipped the little tabloid to his lips.
Moreover, in spite of the stresses upon him, in spite of the fact that he was in the wrong, and Redwood's junior by a dozen years, that strange quality in him, the something--personal magnetism one may call it for want of a better name--that had won his way for him to this eminence of disaster was with him still.

On that also Redwood had failed to reckon.
From the first, so far as the course and conduct of their speech went, Caterham prevailed over Redwood.