supper in
the world."

"Why is there this aroma of mystery hanging about the affair, then?"
some one asked.

"Well, for one or two reasons," Baker answered. "One, no doubt, is
because Sir Timothy has a great idea of arranging the fights himself,
and the opponents actually don't know until the fight begins whom they
are meeting, and sometimes not even then. There has been some gossiping,
too, about the rules, and the weight of the gloves, but that I know,
nothing about."

"And the rest of the show?" a younger member enquired. "Is it simply
dancing and music and that sort of thing?"

"Just a variety entertainment," the proud possessor of the scarlet-hued
ticket declared. "Sir Timothy always has something up his sleeve. Last
year, for instance, he had those six African girls over from Paris in
that queer dance which they wouldn't allow in London at all. This
time no one knows what is going to happen. The house, as you know, is
absolutely surrounded by that hideous stone wall, and from what I have
heard, reporters who try to get in aren't treated too kindly. Here's
Ledsam. Very likely he knows more about it."

"Ledsam," some one demanded, as Francis joined the group, "are you going
to Sir Timothy Brast's show to-morrow night?"

"I hope so," Francis replied, producing his strip of pasteboard.

"Ever been before?"

"Never."

"Do you know what sort of a show it's going to be?" the actor enquired.

"Not the slightest idea. I don't think any one does. That's rather a
feature of the affair, isn't it?"

"It is the envious outsider who has never received an invitation, like
myself," some one remarked, "who probably spreads these rumours, for one
always hears it hinted that some disgraceful and illegal exhibition
is on tap there--a new sort of drugging party, or some novel form of
debauchery."

"I don't think," Francis said quietly, "that Sir Timothy is quite that
sort of man."

"Dash it all, what sort of man is he?" the actor demanded. "They tell me
that financially he is utterly unscrupulous, although he is rolling
in money. He has the most Mephistophelian expression of any man I ever
met--looks as though he'd set his heel on any one's neck for the sport
of it--and yet they say he has given at least fifty thousand pounds to
the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and that the whole
of the park round that estate of his down the river is full of lamed and
decrepit beasts which he has bought himself of