THE man who that morning walked without announcement into Dr. Oberzohn’s office might have stepped from the pages of a catalogue of men’s fashions. He was, to the initiated eye, painfully new. His lemon gloves, his dazzling shoes, the splendour of his silk hat, the very correctness of his handkerchief display, would have been remarkable even in the Ascot paddock on Cup day. He was good-looking, smooth, if a trifle plump, of face, and he wore a tawny little moustache and a monocle. People who did not like Captain Monty Newton—and their names were many—said of him that he aimed at achieving the housemaid’s conception of a guardsman. They did not say this openly, because he was a man to be propitiated rather than offended. He had money, a place in the country, a house in Chester Square, and an assortment of cars. He was a member of several good clubs, the committees of which never discussed him without offering the excuse of war-time courtesies for his election. Nobody knew how he made his money, or, if it were inherited, whose heir he was. He gave extravagant parties, played cards well, and enjoyed exceptional luck, especially when he was the host and held the bank after one of the splendid dinners he gave in his Chester Square mansion. “Good morning, Oberzohn—how is Smitts?” It was his favourite jest, for there was no Smitts, and had been no Smitts in the firm since ’96. The doctor, peering down at the telegram he was writing, looked up. “Good morning, Captain Newton,” he said precisely. Newton passed to the back of him and read the message he was writing. It was addressed to “Miss Alma Goddard, Heavytree Farm, Daynham, Gloucester,” and the wire ran: “Have got the fine situation. Cannot expeditiously return to-night. I am sleeping at our pretty flat in Doughty Court. Do not come up until I send for you.—=Miss Mirabelle Leicester.=” “She’s here, is she?” Captain Newton glanced at the laboratory door. “You’re not going to send that wire? ‘Miss Mirabelle Leicester!’ ‘Expeditiously return!’ She’d tumble it in a minute. Who is Alma Goddard?” “The aunt,” said Oberzohn. “I did not intend the dispatching until you had seen it. My English is too correct.” He made way for Captain Newton, who, having taken a sheet of paper from the rack on which to deposit with great care his silk hat, and having stripped his gloves and deposited them in his hat, sat down in the chair from which the older man had risen, pulled up the knees of his immaculate trousers, tore off the top telegraph form, and wrote under the address: “Have got the job. Hooray! Don’t bother to come up, darling, until I am settled. Shall sleep at the flat as usual. Too busy to write. Keep my letters.—MIRABELLE.” “That’s real,” said Captain Newton, surveying his work with satisfaction. “Push it off.” He got up and straddled his legs before the fire. “The hard part of the job may be to persuade the lady to come to Chester Square,” he said.