anted, and had no
further concern with the ancestry, the ramifications, the abodes or
possessions of the Tristrams of Blent. To him who knew, the entry itself
was expressive in what it said and in what it omitted; read in
conjunction with Josiah Cholderton's Journal it was yet more eloquent.
By itself it hinted a scandal--else why no dates for the marriages? With
the Journal it said something more. For the 20th is not "early in July."
Yet Mr Neeld had never heard--! He shut the book hastily and put it back
on the shelf. Returning to his desk, he took up the blue pencil. But on
second thoughts this instrument did not content him. Scissors were to
his hand; with them he carefully cut out from the manuscript the whole
account of Mr Cholderton's visit to Heidelberg (he would run no risks,
and there was nothing important in it), dated it, marked it with the
page to which it belonged in the Journal, and locked it away in a
drawer.

He felt resentful toward his dead friend Josiah Cholderton. If there be
a safe pastime, one warranted to lead a man into no trouble and to
entangle him in no scandals, it would seem to lie in editing the Journal
of a Member of Parliament, a Commercial Delegate, an Inventor of the
Hygroxeric Method of Dressing Wool. Josiah Cholderton had--not quite for
the first time--played him false. But never so badly as this before!

"Good gracious me!" he muttered. "The thing is nothing more nor less
than an imputation on the legitimacy of the son and heir!"

That same afternoon he went over to the Imperium to vote at the election
of members. It struck him as one of the small coincidences of life that
among the candidates who faced the ballot was a Colonel Wilmot Edge,
R.E.

"Any relation, I wonder?" mused Mr Neeld as he dropped in an affirmative
ball. But it may be added, since not even the secrets of club ballots
are to be held sacred, that he bestowed one of a different sort on a
certain Mr William Iver, who was described as a "Contractor," and whose
name was familiar and conspicuous on the hoardings that screened new
buildings in London, and was consequently objectionable to Mr Neeld's
fastidious mind.

"I don't often blackball," he remarked to Lord Southend as they were
sitting down to whist, "but, really, don't you think the Imperium should
maintain--er--a certain level?"

"Iver's a devilish rich fellow and not a bad fellow either," grunted my
lord.

II

MR CHOLDERTON'S IMP

"Yes, mad