Hubert Cherrell stood outside his father’s club in Pall Mall, a senior affair of which he was not yet a member. He was feeling concerned, for he had a respect for his father somewhat odd in days when fathers were commonly treated as younger brethren, or alluded to as ‘that old man.’ Nervously therefore he entered an edifice wherein more people had held more firmly to the prides and prejudices of a lifetime than possibly anywhere else on earth. There was little however, either of pride or prejudice, about the denizens of the room into which he was now shown. A short alert man with a pale face and a tooth-brush moustache was biting the end of a pen, and trying to compose a letter to ‘The Times’ on the condition of Iraq; a modest-looking little Brigadier General with a bald forehead and grey moustache was discussing with a tall modest-looking Lieutenant Colonel the flora of the island of Cyprus; a man of square build, square cheek-bones and lion-like eyes, was sitting in the window as still as if he had just buried an aunt and were thinking whether or not he would try and swim the Channel next year; and Sir Conway himself was reading ‘Whitaker’s Almanac.’

“Hallo, Hubert! This room’s too small. Come into the hall.” Hubert had the instant feeling not only that he wanted to say something to his father, but that his father wanted to say something to him. They sat down in a recess.

“What’s brought you up?”

“I want to get married, Sir.”

“Married?”

“To Jean Tasburgh.”

“Oh!”

“We thought of getting a special licence and having no fuss.”

The General shook his head. “She’s a fine girl, and I’m glad you feel like that, but the fact is your position’s queer, Hubert. I’ve just been hearing.”

Hubert noticed suddenly how worn-looking was his father’s face. “That fellow you shot. They’re pressing for your extradition on a charge of murder.”

“What?”

“It’s a monstrous business, and I can’t believe they’ll go on with it in the face of what you say about his going for you — luckily you’ve still got his scar on your arm; but it seems there’s the deuce of a fuss in the Bolivian papers; and those half-castes are sticking together about it.”

“I must see Hallorsen at once.”

“The authorities won’t be in a hurry, I expect.”

After this, the two sat silent in the big hall, staring in front of them with very much the same expression on their faces. At the back of both their minds the fear of this development had lurked, but neither had ever permitted it to take definite shape; and its wretchedness was therefore the more potent. To the General it was even more searing than to Hubert. The idea that his only son could be haled half across the world on a charge of murder was as horrible as a nightmare.

“No good to let it prey on our minds, Hubert,” he said at last; “if there’s any sense in the country at all we’ll get this stopped. I was trying to think of someone who knows how to get at people. I’m helpless in these matters — some fellows seem to know everybody and exactly how to work them. I think we’d better go to Lawrence Mont; he knows Saxenden anyway, and probably the people at the Foreign Office. It was Topsham who told me, but he can do nothing. Let’s walk, shall we? Do us good.”

Much touched by the way his father was identifying himself with his trouble, Hubert squeezed his arm, and they left the Club. In Piccadilly the General said, with a transparent effort: “I don’t much like all these changes.”

“Well, Sir, except for Devonshire House, I don’t believe I notice them.”

“No, it’s queer; the spirit of Piccadilly is stronger than the street itself, you can’t destroy its atmosphere. You never see a top hat now, and yet it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I felt the same walking down Piccadilly after the war as I did as a youngster back from India. One just had the feeling of having got there at last.”

“Yes; you get a queer sort of homesickness for it. I did in Mespot and Bolivia. If one closed one’s eyes the whole thing would start up.”

“Core of English life,” began the General, and stopped, as if surprised at having delivered a summary.

“Even the Americans feel it,” remarked Hubert, as they turned into Half-Moon Street. “Hallorsen was saying to me they had nothing like it over there; ‘no focus for their national influence’ was the way he put it.”

“And yet they HAVE influence,” said the General.

“No doubt about that, Sir, but can you define it? Is it their speed that gives it them?”

“Where does their speed get them? Everywhere in general; nowhere in particular. No, it’s their money, I think.”

“Well, I’ve noticed about Americans, and it’s where most people go wrong, that they care very little for money as money. They like to get it fast; but they’d rather lose it fast than get it slow.”

“Queer thing having no core,” said the General.

“The country’s too big, Sir. But they have a sort of core, all the same — pride of country.”

The General nodded.

“Queer little old streets these. I remember walking with my Dad from Curzon Street to the St. James’ Club in ‘82 — day I first went to Harrow — hardly a stick changed.” And so, concerned in talk that touched not on the feelings within them, they reached Mount Street.

“There’s your Aunt Em, don’t tell her.”

A few paces in front of them Lady Mont was, as it were, swimming home. They overtook her some hundred yards from the door.

“Con,” she said, “you’re lookin’ thin.”

“My dear girl, I never was anything else.”

“No. Hubert, there was somethin’ I wanted to ask you. Oh! I know! But Dinny said you hadn’t had any breeches since the war. How do you like Jean? Rather attractive?”

“Yes, Aunt Em.”

“She wasn’t expelled.”

“Why should she have been?”

“Oh! well, you never know. She’s never terrorised me. D’you want Lawrence? It’s Voltaire now and Dean Swift. So unnecessary — they’ve been awfully done; but he likes doin’ them because they bite. About those mules, Hubert?”

“What about them?”

“I never can remember if the donkey is the sire or the dam.”

“The donkey is the sire and the dam a mare, Aunt Em.”

“Yes, and they don’t have children — such a blessin’. Where’s Dinny?”

“She’s in town, somewhere.”

“She ought to marry.”

“Why?” said the General.

“Well, there she is! Hen was saying she’d make a good lady-inwaitin’— unselfish. That’s the danger.” And, taking a latchkey out of her bag, Lady Mont applied it to the door.

“I can’t get Lawrence to drink tea — would you like some?”

“No thank you, Em.”

“You’ll find him stewin’ in the library.” She kissed her brother and her nephew, and swam towards the stairs. “Puzzlin’,” they heard her say as they entered the library. They found Sir Lawrence surrounded by the works of Voltaire and Swift, for he was engaged on an imaginary dialogue between those two serious men. He listened gravely to the General’s tale.

“I saw,” he said, when his brother-inlaw had finished, “that Hallorsen had repented him of the evil — that will be Dinny. I think we’d better see him — not here, there’s no cook, Em’s still slimming — but we can all dine at the Coffee House.” And he took up the telephone.

Professor Hallorsen was expected in at five and should at once be given the message.

“This............