"Reggie!--the idea! As though I would rob you of what you have so fairly earned!" He closed the crimson-coloured volume. "Our next business, gentlemen, is to ascertain the fortunate individual to whose keeping the Honour of the Club is to be now entrusted. Since you, Townsend, have won our diploma of merit, it becomes my duty, as a mere postulant, to resign to you the chair. You will conduct the drawing, in which, of course, you yourself will not take part. Gentlemen, Mr. Townsend will be our chairman, until some equally fortunate colleague has gained his diploma." He rose from their seat, beckoning me towards it with his hand. As I accepted his invitation, there was some tapping of hands upon the table, and Archie called out, "Hear, hear!" I took up the little heap of cards which was on the table in front of my new seat, counting them so that they all could see. "As you perceive, here are eleven." Kendrick sat on my left. I handed the bag to him. "Colonel, will you be first to draw?" Kendrick was the oldest man among us. His hair and moustache were white as snow. He was rich, respected, with troops of friends. Why he had joined us was more than I could say. I guessed that it was to gratify some private grudge. However that might be, I saw that his hand trembled as he thrust it into the bag. He took some time in choosing. When at last he drew his card, glancing quickly at both sides of it, he threw it down upon the table. "Blank!" he said. "Not yet." Rudini sat next to him. He made a little speech before he put his hand into the bag. "If I am what Mr. Pendarvon has called the fortunate individual, it will be no woman I shall kill. I would sooner kill a thousand men. It is for that I joined the club." But he was not the "fortunate individual." He drew a blank. He was shortsighted. He had to peer at it closely before he saw it was a blank. "As the Colonel says--not yet. My time will come." Poindexter sat by Rudini--the Honourable Jem. I always thought it was rather a shame to drag him in. He was only a boy, just out of his teens. He said nothing when he got the bag; he made up in eloquence of looks for paucity of words. There was a white, drawn look about his face which made him look as old as any one of us. He fumbled with the mouth of the bag, as though it was not large enough for him to get his hand in. When he did get one hand in, he dropped the bag from the other. Pendarvon laughed. "Upon my word, you're shivering, Jem; is it with joy?" The Honourable picked up the bag. "What's it to do with you what I am shivering at?" He stared at the card he drew. Then he gasped, "Thank God, it's blank!" Pendarvon laughed again. I believe that the laughter which they say is heard in hell must sound like his. "Why, Jem, one would almost think that you were glad." The Honourable said nothing. He tried to stare at Pendarvon. But it was a failure. He put his head down on the table. And he cried. He was only a lad.