clad in court dress, and official dignity,
to the man whom they were destined to see a month later hanging on his
own flagstaff, out over the plaza, from the spare-bedroom window of
the new presidency. They had acted in concert; they had acted in direct
opposition. Cartoner had once had to tell Deulin that if he persisted
in his present course of action the government which he (Cartoner)
represented would not be able to look upon it with indifference, which
is the language of diplomacy, and means war.

For these men were the vultures of their respective Foreign Offices, and
it was their business to be found where the carcass is.

"The chief difference between the gods and men is that man can only be
in one place at a time," Deulin had once said to Cartoner, twenty years
his junior, in his light, philosophic way, when a turn of the wheel had
rendered a long journey futile, and they found themselves far from that
place where their services were urgently needed.

"If men could be in two places at the same moment, say once only during
a lifetime, their lives would be very different from what they are."
Cartoner had glanced quickly at him when he spoke, but only saw a ready,
imperturbable smile.

Deulin was a man counting his friends among all nationalities. The
captain of a great steamship has perhaps as many acquaintances as may be
vouchsafed to one man, and at the beginning of a voyage he has to assure
a number of total strangers that he remembers them perfectly. Deulin,
during fifty-odd years of his life, had moved through a maze of men,
remembering faces as a ship-captain must recollect those who have sailed
with him, without attaching a name or being able to allot one saving
quality to lift an individual out of the ruck. For it is a lamentable
fact that all men and all women are painfully like each other; it is
only their faces that differ. For God has made the faces, but men have
manufactured their own thoughts.

Deulin had met a few who were not like the others, and one of these
was Reginald Cartoner, who was thrown against him, as it were, in a
professional manner when Deulin had been twenty years at the work.

"I always cross the road," he said, "when I see Cartoner on the other
side. If I did not, he would go past."

This he did in the literal sense the day after Cartoner landed in
England on his return from America. Deulin saw his friend emerge from
a club in Pall Mall and walk westward, as if he had busi