Sir Boyle remained and dined with him. As a bachelor, and an epicure, Lewin Rodwell always gave excellent dinners, dinners that were renowned in London. He had a French _chef_ to whom he paid a big salary--a man who had been _chef_ at Armenonville, in the Bois, in Paris. Upon his kitchen Rodwell spared nothing, hence when any of those men--whom he afterwards so cleverly made use of to swell his bank-balance--accepted his hospitality they knew that the meal would be perhaps the best procurable in all London. Many are the men-about-town who pride themselves upon their knowledge of the gastronomic art, and talk with loving reflections of the soups, entrees, and what-not, that they have eaten. Most of such men are what may be termed "hotel epicures." They swallow the dishes served at the fashionable hotels--dishes to the liking of their own palates possibly-- smack their lips, pay, and are satisfied. But the real epicure--and he is indeed a _rara avis_--is the one who knows that the thin-sliced grey truffle, light as a feather, cannot be put on a fillet in London, and that "sea-truffles" have never been seen in the Metropolis. To be a real epicure one must be a cosmopolitan, taking one's _bouillabaisse_ in Marseilles, one's red mullet in Leghorn, one's caviare at eleven in the morning in Bucharest, one's smoked fish and cheese in Tromso, one's chicken's breasts with rice in Bologna, and so on, across the face of the earth. To the man who merely pretends to know, the long gilt-printed menu of the smart London hotel becomes enticing to the palate, but to the man who has eaten his dinner under many suns it is often an amusing piece of mysteriously-worded bunkum. Lewin Rodwell and his friend the Birthday Baronet sat down together to a perfectly-cooked and perfectly-served repast. Franks, the quiet, astute, clean-shaven man, a secret friend of Germany like his master, moved noiselessly, and the pair chatted without restraint, knowing well that Franks--whose real name was Grunhold--would say nothing. It was not to his advantage to say anything, because he was a secret agent of Germany of the fifth class--namely, one in weekly receipt of sixty marks, or three pounds. Rodwell was apprehensive, unhappy, and undecided. Truth to tell, he wanted to be alone, to plot and to scheme. His friend's presence prevented him from thinking. Yet, after dinner, he was compelled to go forth with him somewhere, so they went to the _revue_ at the Hippodrome, and on to Murray's afterwards. It was half-past two o'clock in the morning when Rodwell re-entered with his latch-key and, passing into his den, found upon his writing-table a rather soiled note, addressed in a somewhat uneducated hand, which had evidently been left during his absence.