The long curve of that street of theatres was thronged with carriages, motor broughams, and cabs. Beautifully-dressed women with filmy lace mantillas over their shining hair, attended by well-groomed men in opera hats and white cashmere scarves, descended from the vehicles and entered this or that theatre. The whole place blazed with light. The great arc-lamps shone on the posters and the marble façades crowned with their huge electric advertisements. The smart restaurants of Piccadilly, Regent Street, and the Haymarket were pouring out their guests at this hour when all the plays were beginning. The London world of pleasure was awake in all its material splendor, luxury and sin. The candle was alight, the gaudy moths fluttering around it. A man and woman descended from a hansom just as Hampson arrived under the portico of the theatre, the woman so covered with jewels that these alone, to say nothing of her general manner and appearance, sufficiently indicated her class. Hampson shuddered as he gave his hat and coat to an attendant, and walked down the softly carpeted corridor through the warm, perfumed air to the stalls. The theatre was very full. On all sides wealth and luxury displayed themselves in unbounded profusion. But this was an audience nearly every member of which was devoted to folly, idle amusement, and worse. Hampson saw vice stamped upon the faces all round him, vice or stupidity, and carelessness. Immediately upon his left, however, there was a young man, sleek and immaculately dressed, who had a somewhat stronger face than many of the young fellows there. There was a certain strength about the jaw and poise of the head, an honesty in the blue eyes which the journalist noticed at once. Hampson sighed. Doubtless this young man was only just entering in upon the life of pleasure and sin. He was not quite a slave yet--his soul not irrevocably stained. But some day he would become like the curious old-young men who sat all round, men with pointed ears, heavy eyes that only brightened when they saw a pretty girl, mouths curved into listless and weary boredom. What a brigade they were, these rich and vicious young fools who supported the Frivolity! Night after night they sat in their accustomed stall while the actresses danced, and postured upon the other side of the footlights--solemn, vacuous, and pitiable. Two men bent over from their seats, and one of them touched the fresh-looking young man by Hampson's side upon the shoulder. The journalist heard names being exchanged--the first speaker was introducing a friend. From this he discovered who his companion was--Sir Thomas Ducaine. The name was quite familiar. The young baronet owned an enormous property in Whitechapel. Some of the foulest and most fetid dens in Europe belonged to him. Filth and misery, gaunt hunger, and black crime crawled through hideous alleys, and slunk in and out of horrible places which were his.