some mysterious agency within, has kept me back."

"All the fellows at the club--"

Simpson is popularly supposed to belong to a Fleet Street Toilet and
Hairdressing Club, where for three guineas a year he gets shaved every
day, and has his hair cut whenever Myra insists. On the many occasions
when he authorizes a startling story of some well-known statesman with
the words: "My dear old chap, I know it for a fact. I heard it at the
club to-day from a friend of his," then we know that once again the
barber's assistant has been gossiping over the lather.

"Do think, Samuel," I interrupted, "how much more splendid if you could
be the only man who had seen Monte Carlo without going inside the rooms.
And then when the hairdresser--when your friends at the club ask if
you've had any luck at the tables, you just say coldly, 'What tables?'"

"Preferably in Latin," said Archie. "_Quae mensae_?"

But it was obviously no good arguing with him. Besides, we were all keen
enough to go.

"We needn't lose," said Myra. "We might win."

"Good idea," said Thomas. He lit his pipe and added, "Simpson was telling
me about his system last night. At least, he was just beginning when I
went to sleep." He applied another match to his pipe and went on, as if
the idea had suddenly struck him, "Perhaps it was only his internal
system he meant. I didn't wait."