Tattersall, and noted three or four accessible blanks on the staircase.

"Almost," she agreed after a glance at the closed door that shut out the
night.

In the re-arrangement I managed to leave her on a lower step, and climbed
to the throne of the gods, at present occupied only by Gordon Hughes, one
of Frank Jervaise's barrister friends from the Temple. Hughes was reputed
"brilliantly clever." He was a tallish fellow with ginger red hair and a
long nose--the foxy type.

"Rum start!" I cried, by way of testing his intellectual quality, but
before I could get on terms with him, the stage was taken by a dark,
curly-haired, handsome boy of twenty-four or so, generally addressed as
"Ronnie." I had thought him very like a well-intentioned retriever pup. I
could imagine him worrying an intellectual slipper to pieces with great
gusto.

"I say, it's all U.P. now," he said, in a dominating voice. "What's the
time?" He was obviously too well turned out to wear a watch with evening
dress.

Some one said it was "twenty-five to one."

"Fifty to one against another dance, then," Ronnie barked joyously.

"Unless you'll offer yourself up as a martyr in a good cause," suggested
Nora Bailey.

"Offer myself up? How?" Ronnie asked.