CHAPTER III


The two men occupied a table set against the wall, not far from
the entrance to the restaurant, and throughout the progress of
the earlier part of their meal were able to watch the constant
incoming stream of their fellow-guests. They were, in their way,
an interesting contrast physically, neither of them good-looking
according to ordinary standards, but both with many pleasant
characteristics. Andrew Wilmore, slight and dark, with sallow
cheeks and brown eyes, looked very much what he was--a moderately
successful journalist and writer of stories, a keen golfer, a
bachelor who preferred a pipe to cigars, and lived at Richmond
because he could not find a flat in London which he could afford,
large enough for his somewhat expansive habits. Francis Ledsam
was of a sturdier type, with features perhaps better known to the
world owing to the constant activities of the cartoonist. His
reputation during the last few years had carried him,
notwithstanding his comparative youth--he was only thirty-five
years of age--into the very front ranks of his profession, and
his income was one of which men spoke with bated breath. He came
of a family of landed proprietors, whose younger sons for
generations had drifted always either to the Bar or the Law, and
his name was well known in the purlieus of Lincoln's Inn before
he himself had made it famous. He was a persistent refuser of
invitations, and his acquaintances in the fashionable world were
comparatively few. Yet every now and then he felt a mild
interest in the people whom his companion assiduously pointed out