the
Grand Babylon. As for Wilkins's, in Devonshire Square, which is
infinitely better known among princes than in the Five Towns, and
whose name is affectionately pronounced with a "V" by half the
monarchs of Europe, few industrial provincials had ever seen it.
The class which is the backbone of England left it serenely alone to
royalty and the aristocratic parasites of royalty.

"I don't see why they shouldn't have him," said Edward Henry, as he
lifted a challenging nose in the air.

"Perhaps you don't, Alderman!" said Brindley.

"_I_ wouldn't mind going to Wilkins's," Edward Henry persisted.

"I'd like to see you," said Brindley, with curt scorn.

"Well," said Edward Henry, "I'll bet you a fiver I do." Had he not
won eighteenpence halfpenny, and was he not securely at peace with his
wife?

"I don't bet fivers," said the cautious Brindley. "But I'll bet you
half-a-crown."

"Done!" said Edward Henry.

"When will you go?"

"Either to-day or to-morrow. I must go to the Majestic first, because
I've ordered a room and so on."

"Ha!" hurtled Brindley, as if to insinuate that Edward Henry was
seeking to escape from the consequences of his boast.

And yet he ought to have known Edward Henry. He did know Edward Henry.
And he hoped to lose his half-crown. On his face and on the faces of
the other two was the cheerful admission that tales of the doings of
Alderman Machin, the great local card, at Wilkins's--if he succeeded
in getting in--would be cheap at half-a-crown.

Porters cried out "Euston!"

II

It was rather late in the afternoon when Edward Henry arrived in front
of the facade of Wilkins's. He came in a taxi-cab, and though the
distance from the Majestic to Wilkins's is not more than a couple of
miles, and he had had nothing else to preoccupy him after lunch, he
had spent some three hours in the business of transferring himself
from the portals of the one hotel to the portals of the other. Two
hours and three-quarters of this period of time had been passed in
finding courage merely to start. Even so, he had left his luggage
behind him. He said to himself that, first of all, he would go and spy
out Wilkins's; in the perilous work of scouting he rightly wished
to be unhampered by impedimenta; moreover, in case of repulse or
accident, he must have a base of operations upon which he could
retreat in good order.

He now looked on Wilkins's for the first time in his life, and he was
even more afrai