d punched my head.)

"No credit to me," he added magnanimously, "seeing I was years older
than you and a foot or so taller. By the way, Carl, how old did you
say you were?"

He regarded me as a sixth-form boy might regard a fourth-form boy.

"I didn't say I was any age," I replied. "But I'm twenty-three."

"Well, then, you're quite old enough to have a drink. Come into the
club and partake of a gin-and-angostura, old man. I'll clear all this
away."

He pointed to the equipage, the horses, and the groom, and with an
apparently magic word whispered into the groom's ear he did in fact
clear them away. They rattled and jingled off in the direction of
Leicester Square, while Sullivan muttered observations on the groom's
driving.

"Don't imagine I make a practice of tooling tandems down to my club,"
said Sullivan. "I don't. I brought the thing along to-day because I've
sold it complete to Lottie Cass. You know her, of course?"

"I don't."

"Well, anyhow," he went on after this check, "I've sold her the entire
bag of tricks. What do you think I'm going to buy?"

"What?"

"A motor-car, old man!"

In those days the person who bought a motor-car was deemed a fearless
adventurer of romantic tendencies. And Sullivan so deemed himself. The
very word "motor-car" then had a strange and thrilling romantic sound
with it.

"The deuce you are!" I exclaimed.

"I am," said he, happy in having impressed me. He took my arm as though
we had been intimate for a thousand years, and led me fearlessly past
the swelling menials within the gate to the club smoking-room, and put
me into a grandfather's chair of pale heliotrope plush in front of an
onyx table, and put himself into another grandfather's chair of
heliotrope plush. And in the cushioned quietude of the smoking-room,
where light-shod acolytes served gin-and-angostura as if serving
gin-and-angostura had been a religious rite, Sullivan went through an
extraordinary process of unchaining himself. His form seemed to be
crossed and re-crossed with chains--gold chains. At the end of one gold
chain was a gold cigarette-case, from which he produced gold-tipped
cigarettes. At the end of another was a gold matchbox. At the end of
another, which he may or may not have drawn out by mistake, were all
sorts of things--knives, keys, mirrors, and pencils. A singular
ceremony! But I was now in the world of gold.

And then smoke ascended from the gold-tipped cigarettes as incense from
ce