The musician hopped down from the barrel and shook hands. He was a dapper little person, and had a trick of punctuating every sentence with a snigger. “Cheer-o,” he said genially. “Is this your first visit?” I said it was. “Then sit on the barrel. We are the only club in London who can offer you the privilege.” Accordingly I sat on the barrel, and through a murmur of applause I could hear Michael telling someone that he’d first seen that barrel five years before his operetta came out at the Court. At that moment a venerable figure strode with dignity into the bar. “Maundrell,” said Malim to me. “The last of the old Bohemians. An old actor. Always wears the steeple hat and a long coat with skirts.” The survivor of the days of Kean uttered a bellow for whisky-and-water. “That barrel,” he said, “reminds me of Buckstone’s days at the Haymarket. After the performance we used to meet at the Café de l’Europe, a few yards from the theatre. Our secret society sat there.” “What was the society called, Mr. Maundrell?” asked a new member with unusual intrepidity. “Its name,” replied the white-headed actor simply, “I shall not divulge. It was not, however, altogether unconnected with the Pink Men of the Blue Mountains. We used to sit, we who were initiated, in a circle. We met to discuss the business of the society. Oh, we were the observed of all observers, I can assure you. Our society was extensive. It had its offshoots in foreign lands. Well, we at these meetings used to sit round a barrel—a great big barrel, which had a hole in the top. The barrel was not merely an ornament, for through the hole in the top we threw any scraps and odds and ends we did not want. Bits of tobacco, bread, marrow bones, the dregs of our glasses—anything and everything went into the barrel. And so it happened, as the barrel became fuller and fuller, strange animals made their appearance—animals of peculiar shape and form crawled out of the barrel and would attempt to escape across the floor. But we were on their tracks. We saw them. We headed them off with our sticks, and we chased them back again to the place where they had been born and bred. We poked them in, sir, with our sticks.” Mr. Maundrell emitted a placid chuckle at this reminiscence. “A good many members of this club,” whispered Malim to me, “would have gone back into that barrel.” A bell sounded. “That’s for the second part to begin,” said Malim. We herded back along the passage. A voice cried, “Be seated, please, gentlemen.” At the far end of the room was a table for the chairman and the committee, and to the left stood a piano. Everyone had now sat down except the chairman, who was apparently not in the room. There was a pause. Then a man from the audience whooped sharply and clambered over the table and into the place of the chairman. He tapped twice with the mallet. “Get out of that chair,” yelled various voices.