upper this very evening at the 'Catalafina.'
He had a meeting at 7.30, at which he would do his best to soften
down this letter of his in the _Times_; he would get it over by 9.30.
Could we meet (say) on the steps of the 'Empire' at ten o'clock?
He would hurry thither straight from the Baths, report progress--for
me to set your mind at rest--and afterwards take me off to this
damned eating-house. I should never find it by myself, he assured
me. He was right there; but I'm not anxious to try. My hope is that
it, or the management, won't find _me_. . . . Well, weakly-and
partly for your sake, Otty--I consented. He said, by the way, he
would be greatly honoured if I'd persuade you to come along too.
'It's Bohemian,' he said; 'if Sir Roderick will overlook it.'
'You told me it was Italian,' said I: 'but never mind. Sir Roderick,
as it happens, is a bit of a Bohemian himself and is dining to-night
with a club of them--the Lost Dogs, if you've ever heard of that
Society.' I saved you, anyway. You may put it that I flung myself
into the breach. They found you, but it was literally over my
prostrate body . . . and here we are."

"Is that the story?" said I.

Jimmy leaned back on his shoulder-blades in the armchair. "It is the
preliminary canter," he announced. "Now we're off, and you watch me
getting into my stride,--

"Farrell turned up, on time. He was somewhat agitated, and I
suspect--yes, in the light of later events I strongly suspect--he had
picked up a drink somewhere on the way. I got into his taxi, and we
swung up Rupert Street, and out of Rupert Street into what the
novelists, when they haven't a handy map or the energy to use it,
describe as a labyrinth leading to questionable purlieus. I am
content to leave it at purlieus. The driver, as it seemed to me, had
as foggy a notion as I of what, without infringing Messrs. Swan and
Edgar's _lingerie_ copyright, we'll call the 'Catalafina's'
whereabouts. Farrell spent two-thirds of the passage with his head
out of window. I don't mean to convey that he was seasick: and he
certainly wasn't drunk, or approaching it. He kept his head out to
shout directions. He was pardonably excited--maybe a bit nervous in
a channel that seemed to be buoyed all the way with pawnbrokers'
signs. But he brought us through. We alighted at the entrance of
the 'Catalafina'; Farrell paid the driver, and I advised him to find
his way back before daylight overtook him.

"I wil