“It was foolish of me,” said Jack Herring. “I thought perhaps it would amuse you to hear what sort of a woman Mrs. Loveredge was like—some description of Mrs. Loveredge’s uncle. Miss Montgomery, friend of Mrs. Loveredge, is certainly one of the most remarkable women I have ever met. Of course, that isn’t her real name. But, as I have said, it was foolish of me. These people—you will never meet them, you will never see them; of what interest can they be to you?”
“They had forgotten to draw down the blinds, and he climbed up a lamp-post and looked through the window,” was the solution of the problem put forward by the Wee Laddie.
“I’m dining there again on Saturday,” volunteered Jack Herring. “If any of you will promise not to make a disturbance, you can hang about on the Park side, underneath the shadow of the fence, and watch me go in. My hansom will draw up at the door within a few minutes of eight.”
The Babe and the Poet agreed to undertake the test.
“You won’t mind our hanging round a little while, in case you’re thrown out again?” asked the Babe.
“Not in the least, so far as I am concerned,” replied Jack Herring. “Don’t leave it too late and make your mother anxious.”
“It’s true enough,” the Babe recounted afterwards. “The door was opened by a manservant and he went straight in. We walked up and down for half an hour, and unless they put him out the back way, he’s telling the truth.”
“Did you hear him give his name?” asked Somerville, who was stroking his moustache.
“No, we were too far off,” explained the Babe. “But I’ll swear it was Jack—there couldn’t be any mistake about that.”
“Perhaps not,” agreed Somerville the Briefless.
Somerville the Briefless called at the offices of Good Humour, in Crane Court, the following morning, and he also borrowed Miss Ramsbotham’s Debrett.
“What’s the meaning of it?” demanded the sub-editor.
“Meaning of what?”
“This sudden interest of all you fellows in the British Peerage.”
“All of us?”
“Well, Herring was here last week, poring over that book for half an hour, with the Morning Post spread out before him. Now you’re doing the same thing.”
“Ah! Jack Herring, was he? I thought as much. Don’t talk about it, Tommy. I’ll tell you later on.”
On the following Monday, the Briefless one announced to the Club that he had received an invitation to dine at the Loveredges’ on the following Wednesday. On Tuesday, the Briefless one entered the Club with a slow and stately step. Halting opposite old Goslin the porter, who had emerged from his box with the idea of discussing the Oxford and Cambridge boat race, Somerville, removing his hat with a sweep of the arm, held it out in silence. Old Goslin, much astonished, took it mechanically, whereupon the Briefless one, shaking himself free from his Inverness cape, flung it lightly after the hat, and strolled on, not noticing that old Goslin, unaccustomed to coats lightly and elegantly thrown at him, dropping the hat, had caught it on his head, and had been, in the language of the prompt-book, “left struggling.” The