d by the social importance of the
callers.

"Sure it's not the Shah of Persia and Charlie Chaplin?" she asked
wearily as she rose from her table and, walking over to the door
marked "Private," passed into Malcolm Sage's room.

Reappearing a moment later she instructed William Johnson to show
the visitors in at once.

As the two men passed through Miss Norman's room, they formed a
striking contrast, Sir John Dene short, thick-set, alert, with the
stamp of the West-End upon all he wore; Sir Jasper Chambers tall,
gaunt arid dingy, with a forehead like the bulging eaves of an
Elizabethan house, and the lower portion of his face a riot of short
grizzled grey hair that seemed to know neither coercion nor
restraint. His neck appeared intent on thrusting itself as far as
possible out of the shabby frock-coat that hung despairingly from
his narrow shoulders.

"I wonder," murmured Gladys Norman, as she returned to her typing,
"how many geraniums he had to give for those clothes."

"Morning, Mr. Sage," cried Sir John Dene.

Malcolm Sage rose. There was an unwonted cordiality in the way in
which he extended his hand.

"This is Sir Jasper Chambers." Sir John Dene turned to his companion.
"You'll be able to place him," and he twirled the unlit cheroot
between his lips with bewildering rapidity.

Sir Jasper bowed with an old-world courtliness and grace that seemed
strangely out of keeping with his lank and unpicturesque bearing.
Malcolm Sage, however, held out his hand with the air of one wishing
to convey that a friend of Sir John Dene merited special
consideration.

He motioned the two men to seats and resumed his own. Both declined
the box of cigars he proffered, Sir John Dene preferring the
well-chewed cheroot between his lips, whilst Sir Jasper drew a pipe
from the tail-pocket of his frock-coat, which with long fleshless
fingers he proceeded to fill from a chamois-leather tobacco-pouch.

"I've brought Sir Jasper along," said Sir John Dene. "You've heard
about the murder of his friend Professor McMurray. He didn't want to
come; but I told him you'd be tickled to death, and that you'd get
it all figured out for him in two wags of a chipmunk's tail."

Malcolm Sage looked across at the eminent philanthropist, whose
whole attention seemed absorbed in the filling of his well-worn
briar.

Sir Jasper's wise charities and great humanitarianism were
world-famous. It was Will Blink, the Labour demagogue, who had said
that