And, thankfully, a taxi appeared from Mount Street, for Red Antony and the police never did mix well. He once arrested two policemen for loitering and took them to Vine Street.... Antony flung open the door. A clock began the lengthy job of striking eleven o’clock. “We will go to _my_ house,” said Antony. “I have a charming house, and an appointment to keep in it. Jump in.” We jumped in, and we heard him give the driver the address of a house in Regent’s Park. How often had we not directed taxis to that house! Tarlyon whistled. “So you’ve got Roger’s old house!” he murmured. Antony did not answer. The taxi staggered northwards as best it could. “I don’t see,” snapped Antony at last, “why you should gape about it. Getting back to England four months ago, I found the house empty, and took it. It seems natural enough.” “I never said it wasn’t,” Tarlyon murmured. But he thought it wasn’t, and so did I. A brother, on coming back to civilisation after many years’ absence, does not immediately leap into the house in which his elder brother blew his brains out--anyway, I wouldn’t. The taxi twisted through the gates, round the little drive, and to the great door. An odd feeling it was, to stand again in front of that door after nine years--but now we faced a house black and still where once had been a house of shining windows, gay with music and the laughter of the most brilliant company in London. Oh, the Georgians, the magnificent young Georgians--mostly dead! We told the driver to wait, and followed Antony in. We stood still in the pitch-black hall until he should switch on the light, and in the blaze of light in which the cloaked figure faced us I instantly understood what Tarlyon had meant when he said that Antony had “changed.” I can only describe the change by saying that the structure of his face seemed to have fallen into disrepair; its brick-red complexion of old had dwindled to a faint pink, so that one had an idea that any ordinary face would have been a ghastly white; and he looked worn with more than the usual wear of passing years. But the wild eyes were still wild, and uncommonly fine he looked as he faced us in the sombre hall, the huge dandy in the black cloak with the head of flaming hair brushed immaculately back. He smiled at us with that sudden charm for which women had forgiven him much--too much; he flung out an arm in the grand manner. “Welcome to the old house,” he said. “And for heaven’s sake try to look as though you didn’t miss Roger.” But the magic of Roger Poole was not, I thought, in the place; the house was now but a shell for a noisy man. III