the events just recorded two men had entered the door of
a certain London club and made their way to a remote little smoking-room
on the first floor. It was not a handsome building, nor had it any
particular outlook or position. It was a small, old-fashioned place in
a side street, in style obviously of last century, and the fittings
within were far from magnificent. Yet no club carried more distinction
in its membership. Its hundred possible inmates were the cream of the
higher professions, the chef and the cellar were things to wonder at,
and the man who could write himself a member of the Rota Club had
obtained one of the rare social honours which men confer on one another.
Thither came all manner of people--the distinguished foreigner travelling
incognito, and eager to talk with some Minister unofficially on matters
of import, the diplomat on a secret errand, the traveller home for a
brief season, the soldier, the thinker, the lawyer. It was a catholic
assembly, but exclusive--very. Each man bore the stamp of competence on
his face, and there was no cheap talk of the "well-informed" variety.
When the members spoke seriously they spoke like experts; otherwise they
were apt to joke very much like schoolboys let loose. The Right Hon.
Mr. M---- was not above twitting Lord S---- with gunroom stories, and
suffering in turn good-natured libel.

Of the two men lighting their pipes in the little room one was to the
first glance a remarkable figure. About the middle height, with a
square head and magnificent shoulders, he looked from the back not
unlike some professional strong man. But his face betrayed him, for it
was clearly the face of the intellectual worker, the man of character
and mind. His jaw was massive and broad, saved from hardness only by a
quaintly humorous mouth; he had, too, a pair of very sharp blue eyes
looking from under shaggy eyebrows. His age was scarcely beyond thirty,
but one would have put it ten years later, for there were lines on his
brow and threads of grey in his hair. His companion was slim and, to a
hasty glance, insignificant. He wore a peaked grey beard which
lengthened his long, thin face, and he had a nervous trick of drumming
always with his fingers on whatever piece of furniture was near. But if
you looked closer and marked the high brow, the keen eyes, and the very
resolute mouth, the thought of insignificance disappeared. He looked
not unlike a fighting Yankee colonel who had had a Puri