I. THE GREAT IDEA


The scene was a dusky shabby little room in Ryder Street. To such caves
many repair whose days are passed, and whose food is consumed, in the
clubs of the adjacent thoroughfare of cooperative palaces, Pall Mall. The
furniture was battered and dingy; the sofa on which Logan sprawled had a
certain historic interest: it was covered with cloth of horsehair, now
seldom found by the amateur. A bookcase with glass doors held a crowd of
books to which the amateur would at once have flown. They were in
'boards' of faded blue, and the paper labels bore alluring names: they
were all First Editions of the most desirable kind. The bottles in the
liqueur case were antique; a coat of arms, not undistinguished, was in
relief on the silver stoppers. But the liquors in the flasks were humble
and conventional. Merton, the tenant of the rooms, was in a Zingari
cricketing coat; he occupied the arm-chair, while Logan, in evening
dress, maintained a difficult equilibrium on the slippery sofa. Both men
were of an age between twenty-five and twenty-nine, both were pleasant to
the eye. Merton was, if anything, under the middle height: fair, slim,
and active. As a freshman he had coxed his College Eight, later he rowed
Bow in that vessel. He had won the Hurdles, but been beaten by his
Cambridge opponent; he had taken a fair second in Greats, was believed to
have been 'runner up' for the Newdigate prize poem, and might have won
other laurels, but that he was found to do the female parts very fairly
in the dramatic performances of the University, a thing irreconcilable
with study. His father was a rural dean. Merton's most obvious vice was
a thirst for general information. 'I know it is awfully bad form to know
anything,' he had been heard to say, 'but everyone has his failings, and