For anything beyond a small assured income of eighty pounds a year, Captain Verinder had to trust to the exercise of his wits. At this time he was a man of sixty, rather below the medium height, but still slim and upright for his years, and with something that might be termed semi-military in his appearance and carriage. The mental exercise in question took the form of billiards. Although far from being a fine player, his natural aptitude for the game had been cultivated by long practice, till he had attained a degree of proficiency at it which he found to answer his purpose very well indeed. That purpose was neither more nor less than to haunt the public rooms within a wide radius of his lodgings, on the lookout for those simpletons with more money than sense, of whom there is an unfailing supply in big cities, who can only be convinced at the expense of their pocket that in the art of billiard-playing they have not yet got beyond their apprenticeship. The Captain regarded it as a very poor week indeed at the end of which he did not find himself in pocket to the extent of fifty shillings, or three pounds—or rather, would have found himself that sum in pocket but for his ineradicable propensity for treating himself and others to innumerable “drinks” and cigars. When perfectly sober, he was one of the stingiest of mortals, but after his third glass he began to thaw, and, a little later, the veriest stranger would have been welcome to share his last shilling. It is a by no means uncommon trait. On the evening of the day prior to the one with which we are now concerned, the Captain, in the course of his rounds, had encountered a sheep-faced, but gentlemanly-looking young fellow, in whom he thought he saw an easy prey. What, then, was his rage and amazement when at the end of the evening the Captain’s eyes opened to the fact that it was a case of the biter being bitten, and that the sheep-faced provincial, instead of being the greenhorn he looked, was, in reality, a graduate in the same school as himself. Small wonder, then, was it that his thoughts this morning were bitter, when, after emptying his pockets, he realised that the absurdly inadequate sum of seven and elevenpence-halfpenny was all that was left him to exist on till the next quarterly payment of his income should fall due, which would not be till between a fortnight and three weeks hence. He was still smoking moodily when he heard his landlady’s shuffling footsteps on the stairs, and, a moment later, her head was protruded into the room. “If you please, Captain, here’s a lady asking for you,” said Mrs. Rapp, a Londoner born and bred. “A lady asking for me? Impossible!” exclaimed the Captain as he started to his feet.