have just invited you and me to a grand dinner-party this very
night, at which Mr Wimpole will be in all his glory. Well, there
is nothing very extraordinary about that. The extraordinary thing
is that we are not going."

"Well, really," I said, "it is already six o'clock and I doubt if
we could get home and dress. I see nothing extraordinary in the
fact that we are not going."

"Don't you?" said Grant. "I'll bet you'll see something
extraordinary in what we're doing instead."

I looked at him blankly.

"Doing instead?" I asked. "What are we doing instead?"

"Why," said he, "we are waiting for one or two hours outside this
house on a winter evening. You must forgive me; it is all my
vanity. It is only to show you that I am right. Can you, with the
assistance of this cigar, wait until both Sir Walter Cholmondeliegh
and the mystic Wimpole have left this house?"

"Certainly," I said. "But I do not know which is likely to leave
first. Have you any notion?"

"No," he said. "Sir Walter may leave first in a glow of rage. Or
again, Mr Wimpole may leave first, feeling that his last epigram is
a thing to be flung behind him like a firework. And Sir Walter may
remain some time to analyse Mr Wimpole's character. But they will
both have to leave within reasonable time, for they will both have