"Dangerous! Here's the fact--he's admitted that he took Marbury to his
rooms in the Temple that midnight. Well, next morning Marbury's found
robbed and murdered in an entry, not fifty yards off!"

"Does anybody suppose that my father would murder him for the sake of
robbing him of whatever he had on him?" she laughed scornfully. "My
father is a very wealthy man, Mr. Spargo."

"May be," answered Spargo. "But millionaires have been known to murder
men who held secrets."

"Secrets!" she exclaimed.

"Have some more tea," said Spargo, nodding at the teapot. "Look
here--this way it is. The theory that people--some people--will build
up (I won't say that it hasn't suggested itself to me) is
this:--There's some mystery about the relationship, acquaintanceship,
connection, call it what you like, of your father and Marbury twenty
odd years ago. Must be. There's some mystery about your father's life,
twenty odd years ago. Must be--or else he'd have answered those
questions. Very well. 'Ha, ha!' says the general public. 'Now we have
it!' 'Marbury,' says the general public, 'was a man who had a hold on
Aylmore. He turned up. Aylmore trapped him into the Temple, killed him
to preserve his own secret, and robbed him of all he had on him as a
blind.' Eh?"

"You think--people will say that?" she exclaimed.

"Cock-sure! They're saying it. Heard half a dozen of 'em say it, in
more or less elegant fashion as I came out of that court. Of course,
they'll say it. Why, what else could they say?"

For a moment Jessie Aylmore sat looking silently into her tea-cup. Then
she turned her eyes on Spargo, who immediately manifested a new
interest in what remained of the tea-cakes.

"Is that what you're going to say in your article tonight?" she asked,
quietly.

"No!" replied Spargo, promptly. "It isn't. I'm going to sit on the
fence tonight. Besides, the case is _sub judice_. All I'm going to do
is to tell, in my way, what took place at the inquest."

The girl impulsively put her hand across the table and laid it on
Spargo's big fist.

"Is it what you think?" she asked in a low voice.

"Honour bright, no!" exclaimed Spargo. "It isn't--it isn't! I don't
think it. I think there's a most extraordinary mystery at the bottom of
Marbury's death, and I think your father knows an enormous lot about
Marbury that he won't tell, but I'm certain sure that he neither killed
Marbury nor knows anything whatever about his death. And as I'm out to
clear this mystery up, and mean to do it, nothing'll make me more glad
than to clear your father. I say, do have some more tea-cake? We'll
have fresh ones--and fresh tea."

"No, thank you," she said smiling. "And thank you for what you've just
said. I'm going now, Mr. Spargo. You've done me good."

"Oh, rot!" exclaimed Spargo. "Nothing--nothing! I've just told you what
I'm thinking. You must go?..."

He saw her into a taxi-cab presently, and when she had gone stood
vacantly staring after the cab until a hand clapped him smartly on the
shoulder. Turning, he found Rathbury grinning at him.

"All right, Mr. Spargo, I saw you!" he said. "Well, it's a pleasant
change to squire young ladies after being all day in that court. Look
here, are you going to start your writing just now?"

"I'm not going to start my writing as you call it, until after I've
dined at seven o'clock and given myself time to digest my modest
dinner," answered Spargo. "What is it?"

"Come back with me and have another look at that blessed leather box,"
said Rathbury. "I've got it in my room, and I'd like to examine it for
myself. Come on!"

"The thing's empty," said Spargo.

"There might be a false bottom in it," remarked Rathbury. "One never
knows. Here, jump into this!"

He pushed Spargo into a passing taxi-cab, and following, bade the
driver go straight to the Yard. Arrived there, he locked Spargo and
himself into the drab-visaged room in which the journalist had seen
him before.

"What d'ye think of today's doings, Spargo?" he asked, as he proceeded
to unlock a cupboard.

"I think," said Spargo, "that some of you fellows must have had your
ears set to tingling."

"That's so," assented Rathbury. "Of course, the next thing'll be to
find out all about the Mr. Aylmore of twenty years since. When a man
won't tell you where he lived twenty years ago, what he was exactly
doing, what his precise relationship with another man was--why, then,
you've just got to find out, eh? Oh, some of our fellows are at work on
the life history of Stephen Aylmore, Esq., M.P., already--you bet!
Well, now, Spargo, here's the famous box."

The detective brought the old leather case out of the cupboard in which
he had been searching, and placed it on his desk. Spargo threw back the
lid and looked inside, measuring the inner capacity against the
exterior lines.

"No false bottom in that, Rathbury," he said. "There's just the outer
leather case, and the inner lining, of this old bed-hanging stuff, and
that's all. There's no room for any false bottom or anything of that
sort, d'you see?"

Rathbury also sized up the box's capacity.

"Looks like it," he said disappointedly. "Well, what about the lid,
then? I remember there was an old box like this in my grandmother's
farmhouse, where I was reared--there was a pocket in the lid. Let's see
if there's anything of the sort here?"

He threw the lid back and began to poke about the lining of it with the
tips of his fingers, and presently he turned to his companion with a
sharp exclamation.

"By George, Spargo!" he said. "I don't know about any pocket, but
there's something under this lining. Feels like--here, you feel.
There--and there."

Spargo put a finger on the places indicated.

"Yes, that's so," he agreed. "Feels like two cards--a large and a small
one. And the small one's harder than the other. Better cut that lining
out, Rathbury."

"That," remarked Rathbury, producing a pen-knife, "is just what I'm
going to do. We'll cut along this seam."

He ripped the lining carefully open along the upper part of the lining
of the lid, and looking into the pocket thus made, drew out two objects
which he dropped on his blotting pad.

"A child's photograph," he said, glancing at one of them. "But what on
earth is that?"

The object to which he pointed was a small, oblong piece of thin,
much-worn silver, about the size of a railway ticket. On one side of it
was what seemed to be a heraldic device or coat-of-arms, almost
obliterated by rubbing; on the other, similarly worn down by friction,
was the figure of a horse.

"That's a curious object," remarked Spargo, picking it up. "I never saw
anything like that before. What can it be?"

"Don't know--I never saw anything of the sort either," said Rathbury.
"Some old token, I should say. Now this photo. Ah--you see, the
photographer's name and address have been torn away or broken
off--there's nothing left but just two letters of what's apparently
been the name of the town--see. Er--that's all there is. Portrait of a
baby, eh?"

Spargo gave, what might have been called in anybody else but him, a
casual glance at the baby's portrait. He picked up the silver ticket
again and turned it over and over.

"Look here, Rathbury," he said. "Let me take this silver thing. I know
where I can find out what it is. At least, I think I do.''

"All right," agreed the detective, "but take the greatest care of it,
and don't tell a soul that we found it in this box, you know. No
connection with the Marbury case, Spargo, remember."

"Oh, all right," said Spargo. "Trust me."

He put the silver ticket in his pocket, and went back to the office,
wondering about this singular find. And when he had written his article
that evening, and seen a proof of it, Spargo went into Fleet Street
intent on seeking peculiar information.




CHAPTER FIFTEEN

MARKET MILCASTER


The haunt of well-informed men which Spargo had in view when he turned
out of the _Watchman_ office lay well hidden from ordinary sight and
knowledge in one of those Fleet Street courts the like of which is not
elsewhere in the world. Only certain folk knew of it. It was, of
course, a club; otherwise it would not have been what it was. It is the
simplest thing in life, in England, at any rate, to form a club of
congenial spirits. You get so many of your choice friends and
acquaintances to gather round you; you register yourselves under a name
of your own choosing; you take a house and furnish it according to your
means and your taste: you comply with the very easy letter of the law,
and there you are. Keep within that easy letter, and you can do what
you please on your own premises. It is much more agreeable to have a
small paradise of your own of this description than to lounge about
Fleet Street bars.

The particular club to which Spargo bent his steps was called the
Octoneumenoi. Who evolved this extraordinary combination of Latin and
Greek was a dark mystery: there it was, however, on a tiny brass plate
you once reached the portals. The portals were gained by devious ways.
You turned out of Fleet Street by an alley so narrow that it seemed as
if you might suddenly find yourself squeezed between the ancient walls.
Then you suddenly dived down another alley and found yourself in a
small court, with high walls around you and a smell of printer's ink in
your nose and a whirring of printing presses in your ears. You made
another dive into a dark entry, much encumbered by bales of paper,
crates of printing material, jars of printing ink; after falling over a
few of these you struck an ancient flight of stairs and went up past
various landings, always travelling in a state of gloom and fear. After
a lot of twisting and turning you came to the very top of the house and
found it heavily curtained off. You lifted a curtain and found yourself
in a small entresol, somewhat artistically painted--the whole and sole
work of an artistic member who came one day with a formidable array of
lumber and paint-pots and worked his will on the ancient wood. Then you
saw the brass plate and its fearful name, and beneath it the formal
legal notice that this club was duly registered and so on, and if you
were a member you went in, and if you weren't a member you tinkled an
electric bell and asked to see a member--if you knew one.

Spargo was not a member, but he knew many members, and he tinkled the
bell, and asked the boy who answered it for Mr. Starkey. Mr. Starkey, a
young gentleman with the biceps of a prize-fighter and a head of curly
hair that would have done credit to Antinous, came forth in due course
and shook Spargo by the hand until his teeth rattled.

"Had we known you were coming," said Mr. Starkey, "we'd have had a
brass band on the stairs."

"I want to come in," remarked Spargo.

"Sure!" said Mr. Starkey. "That's what you've come for."

"Well, stand out of the way, then, and let's get in," said Spargo.
"Look here," he continued when they had penetrated into a small
vestibule, "doesn't old Crowfoot turn in here about this time every
night?"

"Every night as true as the clock, my son Spargo, Crowfoot puts his
nose in at precisely eleven, having by that time finished that daily
column wherein he informs a section of the populace as to the prospects
of their spotting a winner tomorrow," answered Mr. Starkey. "It's five
minutes to his hour now. Come in and drink till he comes. Want him?"

"A word with him," answered Spargo. "A mere word--or two."

He followed Starkey into a room which was so filled with smoke and
sound that for a moment it was impossible to either see or hear. But
the smoke was gradually making itself into a canopy, and beneath the
canopy Spargo made out various groups of men of all ages, sitting
around small tables, smoking and drinking, and all talking as if the
great object of their lives was to get as many words as possible out of
their mouths in the shortest possible time. In the further corner was a
small bar; Starkey pulled Spargo up to it.

"Name it, my son," commanded Starkey. "Try the Octoneumenoi very extra
special. Two of 'em, Dick. Come to beg to be a member, Spargo?"

"I'll think about being a member of this ante-room of the infernal
regions when you start a ventilating fan and provide members with a
route-map of the way from Fleet Street," answered Spargo, taking his
glass. "Phew!--what an atmosphere!"

"We're considering a ventilating fan," said Starkey. "I'm on the house
committee now, and I brought that very matter up at our last meeting.
But Templeson, of the _Bulletin_--you know Templeson--he says what we
want is a wine-cooler to stand under that sideboard--says no club is
proper without a wine-cooler, and that he knows a chap--second-hand
dealer, don't you know--what has a beauty to dispose of in old
Sheffield plate. Now, if you were on our house committee, Spargo, old
man, would you go in for the wine-cooler or the ventilating fan? You
see--"

"There is Crowfoot," said Spargo. "Shout him over here, Starkey, before
anybody else collars him."

Through the door by which Spargo had entered a few minutes previously
came a man who stood for a moment blinking at the smoke and the lights.
He was a tall, elderly man with a figure and bearing of a soldier; a
big, sweeping moustache stood well out against a square-cut jaw and
beneath a prominent nose; a pair of keen blue eyes looked out from
beneath a tousled mass of crinkled hair. He wore neither hat nor cap;
his attire was a carelessly put on Norfolk suit of brown tweed; he
looked half-unkempt, half-groomed. But knotted at the collar of his
flannel shirt were the colours of one of the most famous and exclusive
cricket clubs in the world, and everybody knew that in his day their
wearer had been a mighty figure in the public eye.

"Hi, Crowfoot!" shouted Starkey above the din and babel. "Crowfoot,
Crowfoot! Come over here, there's a chap dying to see you!"

"Yes, that's the way to get him, isn't it?" said Spargo. "Here, I'll
get him myself."

He went across the room and accosted the old sporting journalist.

"I want a quiet word with you," he said. "This place is like a
pandemonium."

Crowfoot led the way into a side alcove and ordered a drink.

"Always is, this time," he said, yawning. "But it's companionable. What
is it, Spargo?"

Spargo took a pull at the glass which he had carried with him. "I
should say," he said, "that you know as much about sporting matters as
any man writing about 'em?"

"Well, I think you might say it with truth," answered Crowfoot.

"And old sporting matters?" said Spargo.

"Yes, and old sporting matters," replied the other with a sudden flash
of the eye. "Not that they greatly interest the modern generation, you
know."

"Well, there's something that's interesting me greatly just now,
anyway," said Spargo. "And I believe it's got to do with old sporting
affairs. And I came to you for information about it, believing you to
be the only man I know of that could tell anything."

"Yes--what is it?" asked Crowfoot.

Spargo drew out an envelope, and took from it the carefully-wrapped-up
silver ticket. He took off the wrappings and laid the ticket on
Crowfoot's outstretched palm.

"Can you tell me what that is?" he asked.

Another sudden flash came into the old sportsman's eyes--he eagerly
turned the silver ticket over.

"God bless my soul!" he exclaimed. "Where did you get this?"

"Never mind, just now," replied Spargo. "You know what it is?"

"Certainly I know what it is! But--Gad! I've not seen one of these
things for Lord knows how many years. It makes me feel something like a
young 'un again!" said Crowfoot. "Quite a young 'un!"

"But what is it?" asked Spargo.

Crowfoot turned the ticket over, showing the side on which the heraldic
device was almost worn away.

"It's one of the original silver stand tickets of the old racecourse at
Market Milcaster," answered Crowfoot. "That's what it is. One of the
old original silver stand tickets. There are the arms of Market
Milcaster, you see, nearly worn away by much rubbing. There, on the
obverse, is the figure of a running horse. Oh, yes, that's what it is!
Bless me!--most interesting."

"Where's Market Milcaster?" enquired Spargo. "Don't know it."

"Market Milcaster," replied Crowfoot, still turning the silver ticket
over and over, "is what the topographers call a decayed town in
Elmshire. It has steadily decayed since the river that led to it got
gradually silted up. There used to be a famous race-meeting there in
June every year. It's nearly forty years since that meeting fell
through. I went to it often when I was a lad--often!"

"And you say that's a ticket for the stand?" asked Spargo.

"This is one of fifty silver tickets, or passes, or whatever you like
to call 'em, which were given by the race committee to fifty burgesses
of the town," answered Crowfoot. "It was, I remember, considered a
great privilege to possess a silver ticket. It admitted its
possessor--for life, mind you!--to the stand, the paddocks, the ring,
anywhere. It also gave him a place at the annual race-dinner. Where on
earth did you get this, Spargo?"

Spargo took the ticket and carefully re-wrapped it, this time putting
it in his purse.

"I'm awfully obliged to you, Crowfoot," he said, "The fact is, I can't
tell you where I got it just now, but I'll promise you that I will tell
you, and all about it, too, as soon as my tongue's free to do so."

"Some mystery, eh?" suggested Crowfoot.

"Considerable," answered Spargo. "Don't mention to anyone that I showed
it to you. You shall know everything eventually."

"Oh, all right, my boy, all right!" said Crowfoot. "Odd how things turn
up, isn't it? Now, I'll wager anything that there aren't half a dozen
of these old things outside Market Milcaster itself. As I said, there
were only fifty, and they were all in possession of burgesses. They
were so much thought of that they were taken great care of. I've been
in Market Milcaster myself since the races were given up, and I've seen
these tickets carefully framed and hung over mantelpieces--oh, yes!"

Spargo caught at a notion.

"How do you get to Market Milcaster?" he asked.

"Paddington," replied Crowfoot. "It's a goodish way."

"I wonder," said Spargo, "if there's any old sporting man there who
could remember--things. Anything about this ticket, for instance?"

"Old sporting man!" exclaimed Crowfoot. "Egad!--but no, he must be
dead--anyhow, if he isn't dead, he must be a veritable patriarch. Old
Ben Quarterpage, he was an auctioneer in the town, and a rare
sportsman."

"I may go down there," said Spargo. "I'll see if he's alive."

"Then, if you do go down," suggested Crowfoot, "go to the old 'Yellow
Dragon' in the High Street, a fine old place. Quarterpage's place of
business and his private house were exactly opposite the 'Dragon.' But
I'm afraid you'll find him dead--it's five and twenty years since I was
in Market Milcaster, and he was an old bird then. Let's see, now. If
Old Ben Quarterpage is alive, Spargo, he'll be ninety years of age!"

"Well, I've known men of ninety who were spry enough, even in my bit of
experience," said Spargo. "I know one--now--my own grandfather. Well,
the best of thanks, Crowfoot, and I'll tell you all about it some day."

"Have another drink?" suggested Crowfoot.

But Spargo excused himself. He was going back to the office, he said;
he still had something to do. And he got himself away from the
Octoneumenoi, in spite of Starkey, who wished to start a general debate
on the wisest way of expending the club's ready money balance, and went
back to the _Watchman_, and there he sought the presence of the editor,
and in spite of the fact that it was the busiest hour of the night, saw
him and remained closeted with him for the extraordinary space of ten
minutes. And after that Spargo went home and fell into bed.

But next morning, bright and early, he was on the departure platform at
Paddington, suit-case in hand, and ticket in pocket for Market
Milcaster, and in the course of that afternoon he found himself in an
old-fashioned bedroom looking out on Market Milcaster High Street. And
there, right opposite him, he saw an ancient house, old brick,
ivy-covered, with an office at its side, over the door of which was the
name, _Benjamin Quarterpage_.




CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE "YELLOW DRAGON"


Spargo, changing his clothes, washing away the dust of his journey, in
that old-fashioned lavender-scented bedroom, busied his mind in
further speculations on his plan of campaign in Market Milcaster. He
had no particularly clear plan. The one thing he was certain of was
that in the old leather box which the man whom he knew as John Marbury
had deposited with the London and Universal Safe Deposit Company, he
and Rathbury had discovered one of the old silver tickets of Market
Milcaster racecourse, and that he, Spargo, had come to Market
Milcaster, with the full approval of his editor, in an endeavour to
trace it. How was he going to set about this difficult task?

"The first thing," said Spargo to himself as he tied a new tie, "is to
have a look round. That'll be no long job."

For he had already seen as he approached the town, and as he drove from
the station to the "Yellow Dragon" Hotel, that Market Milcaster was a
very small place. It chiefly consisted of one long, wide
thoroughfare--the High Street--with smaller streets leading from it on
either side. In the High Street seemed to be everything that the town
could show--the ancient parish church, the town hall, the market cross,
the principal houses and shops, the bridge, beneath which ran the river
whereon ships had once come up to the town before its mouth, four miles
away, became impassably silted up. It was a bright, clean, little town,
but there were few signs of trade in it, and Spargo had been quick to
notice that in the "Yellow Dragon," a big, rambling old hostelry,
reminiscent of the old coaching days, there seemed to be little doing.
He had eaten a bit of lunch in the coffee-room immediately on his
arrival; the coffee-room was big enough to accommodate a hundred and
fifty people, but beyond himself, an old gentleman and his daughter,
evidently tourists, two young men talking golf, a man who looked like
an artist, and an unmistakable honeymooning couple, there was no one in
it. There was little traffic in the wide street beneath Spargo's
windows; little passage of people to and fro on the sidewalks; here a
countryman drove a lazy cow as lazily along; there a farmer in his
light cart sat idly chatting with an aproned tradesman, who had come
out of his shop to talk to him. Over everything lay the quiet of the
sunlight of the summer afternoon, and through the open windows stole a
faint, sweet scent of the new-mown hay lying in the meadows outside the
old houses.

"A veritable Sleepy Hollow," mused Spargo. "Let's go down and see if
there's anybody to talk to. Great Scott!--to think that I was in the
poisonous atmosphere of the Octoneumenoi only sixteen hours ago!"

Spargo, after losing himself in various corridors and passages, finally
landed in the wide, stone-paved hall of the old hotel, and with a sure
instinct turned into the bar-parlour which he had noticed when he
entered the place. This was a roomy, comfortable, bow-windowed
apartment, looking out upon the High Street, and was furnished and
ornamented with the usual appurtenances of country-town hotels. There
were old chairs and tables and sideboards and cupboards, which had
certainly been made a century before, and seemed likely to endure for a
century or two longer; there were old prints of the road and the chase,
and an old oil-painting or two of red-faced gentlemen in pink coats;
there were foxes' masks on the wall, and a monster pike in a glass case
on a side-table; there were ancient candlesticks on the mantelpiece and
an antique snuff-box set between them. Also there was a small,
old-fashioned bar in a corner of the room, and a new-fashioned young
woman seated behind it, who was yawning over a piece of fancy
needlework, and looked at Spargo when he entered as Andromeda may have
looked at Perseus when he made arrival at her rock. And Spargo,
treating himself to a suitable drink and choosing a cigar to accompany
it, noted the look, and dropped into the nearest chair.

"This," he remarked, eyeing the damsel with enquiry, "appears to me to
be a very quiet place."

"Quiet!" exclaimed the lady. "Quiet?"

"That," continued Spargo, "is precisely what I observed. Quiet. I see
that you agree with me. You expressed your agreement with two shades of
emphasis, the surprised and the scornful. We may conclude, thus far,
that the place is undoubtedly quiet."

The damsel looked at Spargo as if she considered him in the light of a
new specimen, and picking up her needlework she quitted the bar and
coming out into the room took a chair near his own.

"It makes you thankful to see a funeral go by here," she remarked.
"It's about all that one ever does see."

"Are there many?" asked Spargo. "Do the inhabitants die much of
inanition?"

The damsel gave Spargo another critical inspection.

"Oh, you're joking!" she said. "It's well you can. Nothing ever happens
here. This place is a back number."

"Even the back numbers make pleasant reading at times," murmured
Spargo. "And the backwaters of life are refreshing. Nothing doing in
this town, then?" he added in a louder voice.

"Nothing!" replied his companion. "It's fast asleep. I came here from
Birmingham, and I didn't know what I was coming to. In Birmingham you
see as many people in ten minutes as you see here in ten months."

"Ah!" said Spargo. "What you are suffering from is dulness. You must
have an antidote."

"Dulness!" exclaimed the damsel. "That's the right word for Market
Milcaster. There's just a few regular old customers drop in here of a
morning, between eleven and one. A stray caller looks in--perhaps
--during the afternoon. Then, at night, a lot of old fogies sit
round that end of the room and talk about old times. Old times,
indeed!--what they want in Market Milcaster is new times."

Spargo pricked up his ears.

"Well, but it's rather interesting to hear old fogies talk about old
times," he said. "I love it!"

"Then you can get as much of it as ever you want here," remarked the
barmaid. "Look in tonight any time after eight o'clock, and if you
don't know more about the history of Market Milcaster by ten than you
did when you sat down, you must be deaf. There are some old gentlemen
drop in here every night, regular as clockwork, who seem to feel that
they couldn't go to bed unless they've told each other stories about
old days which I should think they've heard a thousand times already!"

"Very old men?" asked Spargo.

"Methuselahs," replied the lady. "There's old Mr. Quarterpage, across
the way there, the auctioneer, though he doesn't do any business
now--they say he's ninety, though I'm sure you wouldn't take him for
more than seventy. And there's Mr. Lummis, further down the
street--he's eighty-one. And Mr. Skene, and Mr. Kaye--they're regular
patriarchs. I've sat here and listened to them till I believe I could
write a history of Market Milcaster since the year One."

"I can conceive of that as a pleasant and profitable occupation," said
Spargo.

He chatted a while longer in a fashion calculated to cheer the
barmaid's spirits, after which he went out and strolled around the town
until seven o'clock, the "Dragon's" hour for dinner. There were no more
people in the big coffee-room than there had been at lunch and Spargo
was glad, when his solitary meal was over, to escape to the
bar-parlour, where he took his coffee in a corner near to that sacred
part in which the old townsmen had been reported to him to sit.

"And mind you don't sit in one of their chairs," said the barmaid,
warningly. "They all have their own special chairs and their special
pipes there on that rack, and I suppose the ceiling would fall in if
anybody touched pipe or chair. But you're all right there, and you'll
hear all they've got to say."

To Spargo, who had never seen anything of the sort before, and who,
twenty-four hours previously, would have believed the thing impossible,
the proceedings of that evening in the bar-parlour of the "Yellow
Dragon" at Market Milcaster were like a sudden transference to the
eighteenth century. Precisely as the clock struck eight and a bell
began to toll somewhere in the recesses of the High Street, an old
gentleman walked in, and the barmaid, catching Spargo's eye, gave him a
glance which showed that the play was about to begin.

"Good evening, Mr. Kaye," said the barmaid. "You're first tonight."

"Evening," said Mr. Kaye and took a seat, scowled around him, and
became silent. He was a tall, lank old gentleman, clad in rusty black
clothes, with a pointed collar sticking up on both sides of his fringe
of grey whisker and a voluminous black neckcloth folded several times
round his neck, and by the expression of his countenance was inclined
to look on life severely. "Nobody been in yet?" asked Mr. Kaye. "No,
but here's Mr. Lummis and Mr. Skene," replied the barmaid.

Two more old gentlemen entered the bar-parlour. Of these, one was a
little, dapper-figured man, clad in clothes of an eminently sporting
cut, and of very loud pattern; he sported a bright blue necktie, a
flower in his lapel, and a tall white hat, which he wore at a rakish
angle. The other was a big, portly, bearded man with a Falstaffian
swagger and a rakish eye, who chaffed the barmaid as he entered, and
gave her a good-humoured chuck under the chin as he passed her. These
two also sank into chairs which seemed to have been specially designed
to meet them, and the stout man slapped the arms of his as familiarly
as he had greeted the barmaid. He looked at his two cronies.

"Well?" he said, "Here's three of us. And there's a symposium."

"Wait a bit, wait a bit," said the dapper little man. "Grandpa'll be
here in a minute. We'll start fair."

The barmaid glanced out of the window.

"There's Mr. Quarterpage coming across the street now," she announced.
"Shall I put the things on the table?"

"Aye, put them on, my dear, put them on!" commanded the fat man. "Have
all in readiness."

The barmaid thereupon placed a round table before the sacred chairs,
set out upon it a fine old punch-bowl and the various ingredients for
making punch, a box of cigars, and an old leaden tobacco-box, and she
had just completed this interesting prelude to the evening's discourse
when the door opened again and in walked one of the most remarkable old
men Spargo had ever seen. And by this time, knowing that this was the
venerable Mr. Benjamin Quarterpage, of whom Crowfoot had told him, he
took good stock of the newcomer as he took his place amongst his
friends, who on their part received him with ebullitions of delight
which were positively boyish.

Mr. Quarterpage was a youthful buck of ninety--a middle-sized,
sturdily-built man, straight as a dart, still active of limb,
clear-eyed, and strong of voice. His clean-shaven old countenance was