CHAPTER I

THE PAST INTERVENES

James Challoner, known to his friends and intimates as Jimmy, brushed
an imaginary speck of dust from the shoulder of his dinner jacket, and
momentarily stopped his cheery whistling to stare at himself in the
glass with critical eyes.

Jimmy was feeling very pleased with himself in particular and the world
in general. He was young, and quite passably good-looking, he had
backed a couple of winners that day for a nice little sum, and he was
engaged to a woman with whom he had been desperately in love for at
least three months.

Three months was a long time for Jimmy Challoner to be in love (as a
rule, three days was the outside limit which he allowed himself), but
this--well, this was the real thing at last--the real, romantic thing
of which author chaps and playwright Johnnies wrote; the thing which
sweeps a man clean off his feet and paints the world with rainbow tints.

Jimmy Challoner was sure of it. His usually merry eyes sobered a
little as he met their solemn reflection in the mirror. He took up a
silver-backed brush and carefully smoothed down a kink of hair which
stood aggressively erect above the rest. It was a confounded nuisance,
that obstinate wave in his hair, making him look like a poet or a
drawing-room actor.

Not that he objected to actors and the stage in the very least; on the
contrary, he had the profoundest admiration for them, at which one