"So long as she's got health, beauty, riches, sort of thing, eh!" he added with a laugh. "I just wondered, that's all. Mexico is the devil of a country for wondering in...." I looked at my watch and saw that it was nearly three. The ballroom was deserted, and I could imagine the crowd in the supper-room.... I would make some excuse to Iris to-morrow, I thought, and suggested to Antony that we might have a last drink at my flat, so that he could tell me some of his news. The decanter was empty and the night done when at last Antony left me--having told me many amusing tales of his experiences in Mexico and the West, in which of course he was always the first mover and main _motif_; and that he had come back to England with many good ideas of how to make certain money, if he could only find the capital. "We must talk seriously about all that one of these days, Ronnie," said he. As a matter of fact, Antony's frequent ideas for making fortunes--out of the mugs, of course--weren't quite the silly vapourings of the usual waster, for he had a strain of financial genius which, if he could but have concentrated on anything, might long ago have made him a rich man. And so now I was less sceptical about his ability than about his seriousness. "And is brother Roger as rich as he was?" he had asked me. "Well, he seems to manage very well. But one never really knows about Roger," I said. "There's always rumours, of course, that he's stacked money on a horse, an oil well, or a silver mine; but he never shows any excitement about it." "That," said Antony, "is because he's lucky. Plucky too, but mainly lucky." ... "But about you--how on earth are you going to live? and at the Carlton?" "For a wonder they dealt me some good cards now and then," he vaguely explained, with a laugh. "And when that's gone--well, I must make some more, that's all, Ronnie. And, bless your heart, there's always you to lend a man a fiver, so I won't starve." I was not surprised when Antony, with his wonted casual neglect of such things, did not turn up to lunch the next day. But I was surprised to hear why--from Iris, later in the afternoon. "And so that's why you didn't come to the party last night," she accused me as she came in. She had been bewildered that morning by an unfamiliar voice on the telephone, but of course he had not needed to stress the fact that he was a "relation by marriage" before she had guessed who he was; and had lunched with him at Kettner's. And she was in one of those matter-of-fact moods which made it difficult to discover if she was very pleased or not by Antony's re-appearance. "He was very nice," she said, "and full of a thousand and odd things to say, and some of them very odd indeed. Like a boy back home for the holidays, he seems...." "The sort of boy some one I know by sight wouldn't like to meet again on a dark night in a bad temper," I threw in, reminiscently.