I. THE MAN IN MOTLEY

The Throne Room in the Royal Windsor Hotel was discreetly full of diners–the management never allowed that sacred haven to be packed even in holiday times–and every little table, with its shaded pink lights, held its sheaf of youth and beauty spilling with laughter and dazzling with eyes as bright and alluring as the gems that seemed to float there on a sea of foamy froth cradled in pink and mauve chiffon and diaphanous lace. There was something exceedingly intimate in the half-shrouded tables, each encrusted with the loveliest things that breathe and palpitate in this transient life of ours, and yet it seemed part of one smooth harmonious whole as if the elect gathered there were, after all, one exclusive family.

It was warm and alluring there that eventful New Year’s Eve, with its lights and warmth and laughter, its well-trained waiters, and the scent of roses that clung caressingly to it all. The mere whisper of care or sorrow or tragedy there would have savoured of outrage, and yet those inconsequent diners were no more than ordinary flesh and blood with the heritage of sorrow and suffering that comes to us all. But not to-night, surely not to-night, amidst the wealth of flowers and the ripple of laughter and the sheer joy of being. And it was some half humorous philosophy like this that Roy Gilette was casting inconsequently before his three dinner companions as he sat at Sir Marston Manley’s table in the centre of the room.

“Now, to an old traveller like me,” he frivolled on, “this is a lasting joy. To a man of the world, Sir Marston, this is a dozen novels rolled in