ily Langtry
and Ellen Terry, those empresses of the dual realms of Beauty and
Intelligence. Without any companion portrait, the puffy sensuality of
Oscar Wilde held a prominent place. And between the spectacled face of
Rudyard Kipling on one side and the author of _Peter Pan_ on the other,
Forbes-Robertson in the garb of the Melancholy Dane looked out with his
fine nobility of countenance. The room was heavy with tobacco-smoke,
which seemed to have been accumulating for years, and to have darkened
the very beams of the ceiling. Over the floor a liberal coating of
sawdust was sprinkled.

'Strange place, this,' whispered Johnston Smyth as they took a table in
an unfrequented corner. 'It's an understood thing that the habitues of
Archibald's are trailers in the race of life. If you have a fancy for
human nature, gentlemen, this is the shop to come to. We've got some
queer goods on the shelves--newspaper men with no newspapers to write
for; authors that think out new plots every night and forget 'em by
morning; playwrights that couldn't afford the pit in the Old Vic.--Do
you see that old chap over there?'

'The little man,' said Selwyn, 'with the strange smile?'

'That's right. He's been writing a play now for twenty years, but
hasn't had time to finish the last act. "There's no hurry," he says;
"true art will not permit of haste"--and the joke of it is that he has
a cough that'll give him his own curtain long before he ever writes it
on his play. There he goes now.'

The old playwright had been seized with a paroxysm of coughing that
took his meagre storehouse of breath. Weakly striking at his breast,
he shook and quivered in the clutch of the thing, leaning back
exhausted when it had passed, but never once losing the odd, whimsical
smile.

'What about something to drink?' broke in Dick Durwent hurriedly, his
eyes narrowing.

'Directly,' said Smyth, beckoning to the proprietor, a small man, who,
in spite of his years and an oblong head undecorated by a single hair,
appeared strangely fresh and unworried, as if he had been sleeping for
fifty years in a cellar, and had just come up to view the attending
changes.

'Archibald,' said Smyth, 'these are my friends the Duke of Arkansas and
Sir Plumtree Crabapple.'

The extraordinary little man smiled toothlessly and fingered his tray.

'Gentlemen,' said Smyth, 'name your brands.'

'Give me a double brandy,' said Durwent, blowing on his chilled
fingers. 'B