Strange and desperate expedients passed in review before me. How was I to accomplish my object? The man had denied ever having met me in old days when it had been mentioned to him that I fancied a previous acquaintance had somewhere existed; and if I were to learn anything satisfactory in regard to his antecedents I felt that it must be from others. He had made himself a name in a certain set in London, there was no doubt of that; and I set myself to find out, step by step, how he had contrived to do it--what was the actual foundation for the reports of his wealth, his "smartness," his influence on many sides. On the following day, Monday, I went to my old club, the Wayfarers, which I had not yet troubled with my presence, and picked out a man named Driscoll, who made a business of knowing everybody and everything. Beginning with some conventional talk about the changes in England in general, and London in particular, since I had seen it last, I managed to mention Carson Wildred without appearing to have dragged his name into the conversation for any special purpose of my own. It sprang from some talk about a British Christmas, and I made as humorous a story as I could about my having gone down to the House by the Lock only to miss my friend and my dinner after all. "Wildred can entertain royally if he chooses," said Driscoll. "I've been to dinners he gave at the Savoy and Prince's, and Willis's Rooms, don't you know, something really quite original, with flowers alone which must have cost a fortune. People come to his entertainments, too--he can get anybody he wants--from the duchesses down to the music-hall favourites, even if he likes to get up a conventional river party, with a spread down at that queer place of his you speak of--the House by the Lock." "It is a queer place indeed," I echoed. "I wonder how he came by it?" "Oh, if the stories are true, in a way as peculiar as the place itself, therefore appropriate. It was owned, I know for a matter of fact, by an Italian whose father was exiled, and came over here to live after '48, a chap by the name of di Tortorelli, belonged to a good family and all that, had the _entree_ everywhere. The son, a nice fellow except that he was weak, loved nothing so well as baccarat. Somehow he and Wildred got acquainted, when Wildred was little known, if at all, in society, and the two played cards on rather a big scale at the house of a mutual friend. Di Tortorelli had bad luck one night, lost a pot of money, and finally, having nothing else left that was worth having, staked the House by the Lock--very dilapidated, and in a shocking state of repair.