etter make it two doubles in a large glass.'

'Soda, sir?' queried the proprietor in a high-pitched, tranquil voice.

'No,' said Durwent. 'You can bring a little water in a separate glass.'

'What is your pleasure, your Grace?' said Smyth, addressing the
American. 'If you will do Archibald and myself the honour of trying
the Twilight Tinkle, it would be an event of importance to us both.'

'Anything at all,' said Selwyn, sick at heart as he saw the nervous
interlocked fingers of Dick Durwent pressed together with such
intensity that they were left white and bloodless.

'This is a little slice of London's life,' said Smyth after he had
given the order, crossing his left leg over the right, 'that you
visitors would never find. You hear about the chaps who succeed and
those who come a cropper, but these are the poor beggars who never had
a chance to do either. There's genius in this room, gentlemen, but
it's genius that started swimming up-stream with a millstone round its
neck.'

With a profound shaking of the head, Smyth straightened his left leg,
and after carefully taking in its shape with partially closed eyes, he
replaced it on its fellow.

'How do they live?' queried Selwyn.

'Scavengers,' said Smyth laconically. 'Scavengers to success. Do you
see that fellow there with the poached eyes and a four-days' beard?'

Selwyn looked to the spot indicated by Smyth, and saw a heavily built
man with a pale, dissipated face, who was fingering an empty glass and
leering cynically with some odd trend of thought. It was a face that
gripped the attention, for written on it was talent--immense talent.
It was a face that openly told its tale of massive, misdirected power
of mentality, fuddled but not destroyed by alcohol.

'That's Laurence De Foe,' said Smyth; 'a queer case altogether.
Barnardo boy--doesn't know who his parents were, but claims direct
descent from Charlemagne. He's never really drunk, but no one ever saw
him sober. If he wanted to, he could write better than any man in
London. Last year, when the critics scored Welland's play _Salvage_
for its rotten climax, the author himself came to De Foe. All night
they sat in his stuffy room, and when Welland went away he had a play
that made his name for ever. I could tell you of two of the heavy
artillery among the London leader-writers who always bring their big
stuff to De Foe before they fire it. Last July, when the war was
making its preliminary bo