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young man responded by giving another wave of his hand.
    ‘Who is the juvenile lead?’ asked Gossage.
    He smiled vigorously, at the same time removing his pince-nez to polish them, as if he did not wish Maclintick to think him unduly interested in Mr Deacon and his friend.
    ‘Don’t you know Norman Chandler?’ said Moreland. ‘I should have thought you would have come across him. He is an actor. Also dances a bit. Rather a hand at the saxophone.’
    ‘A talented young gentleman,’ said Gossage.
    Moreland took another newspaper from his pocket, flattened it out on the surface of the table, and began to read a re-hash of the Croydon murder. Maclintick’s face had expressed the strongest distaste during the conversation with Chandler; now he dismissed his indignation and began to discuss the Albert Hall concert Gossage was attending that night. I caught the phrases ‘rhythmic ensemble’ and ‘dynamic and tonal balance’. Carolo sat in complete silence, from time to time tasting his vermouth without relish. Maclintick and Gossage passed on to the Delius Festival at the Queen’s Hall. All this musical ‘shop’, to which Moreland, without looking up from his paper, would intermittently contribute comment, began to make me feel rather out of it. I wished I had been less punctual. Moreland came to the end of the article and pushed the paper from him.
    ‘Edgar was quite cross at my turning out to know Norman,’ he said to me, speaking in a detached, friendly tone. ‘Edgar loves to build up mystery about any young man he meets. There was a lot of excitement about an “ex-convict from Devil’s Island” he met at a fancy dress party the other day dressed as a French matelot.’
    He leaned forward and deftly thrust a penny into the slot of the mechanical piano, which took a second or two to digest the coin, then began to play raucously.
    ‘Oh, good,’ said Moreland.‘ The Missouri Waltz .’
    ‘Deacon is probably right in assuming some of the persons he associates with are sinister enough,’ said Maclintick sourly.
    ‘It is the only pleasure he has left,’ said Moreland. ‘I can’t imagine what Norman was selling. It looked like a bed-pan from the shape of the parcel.’
    Gossage sniggered, incurring a frown from Maclintick.
    Probably fearing Maclintick might make him a new focus of disapproval, he remarked that he must be ‘going soon’.
    ‘Deacon will be getting himself into trouble one of these days,’ Maclintick said, shaking his head and speaking as if he hoped the blow would fall speedily. ‘Don’t you agree, Gossage?’
    ‘Oh, couldn’t say, couldn’t say at all,’ said Gossage hurriedly. ‘I hardly know the man, you see. Met him once or twice at the Proms last year. Join him sometimes over a mug of ale.’
    Maclintick ignored these efforts to present a more bracing picture of Mr Deacon’s activities.
    ‘And it won’t be the first time Deacon got into trouble,’ he said in his grim, high-pitched voice.
    ‘Well, I shall really have to go,’ repeated Gossage, in answer to this further rebuke, speaking as if everyone present had been urging him to stay in the Mortimer for just a few minutes longer.
    ‘You will read my views on Friday. I am keeping an open mind. One has to do that. Goodbye, Moreland, goodbye … Maclintick, goodbye …’
    ‘I must be going too,’ said Carolo unexpectedly.
    He had a loud, harsh voice, and a North Country accent like Quiggin’s. Tossing back the remains of his vermouth as if to the success of a desperate venture from which he was unlikely to return with his life, he finished the dregs at a gulp, and, inclining his head slightly in farewell to the company with an unconcerned movement in keeping with this devil-may-care mood, he followed Gossage from the saloon bar.
    ‘Carolo wasn’t exactly a chatterbox tonight,’ said Moreland.
    ‘Never has much to say for himself,’ Maclintick agreed.
    ‘Always brooding on the old days when he was playing