s. None ever showed a pocketbook. Charlie was dark and burned by
the sun of the tropics; there was something bluff and good-natured about
him, great strength too. He had sharp grey eyes and a dark moustache. He
spoke extraordinarily fast, talked loosely of places he had been to:
China, Mozambique, South America. Victoria rather liked him; he was
totally dull, inclined to be coarse; but as he invariably drank far too
much before and when he came to the Vesuvius, he made no demands on her
patience, slept like a log and went early, leaving handsome recognition
behind him.

There was Jim too, a precise top-hatted city clerk who had forced
himself on her one Saturday afternoon as she crossed Piccadilly Circus.
He seemed such a pattern of rectitude, was so perfectly trim and brushed
that she allowed herself to be inveigled into a cab and driven to a
small flat in Bayswater. He was too prudent to visit anybody else's
rooms, he said; he had his flat on a weekly tenancy. Jim kept rather a
hold on her. He was neither rich nor generous; in fact Victoria's social
sense often stabbed her for what she considered undercutting, but Jim
used to hover about the Vesuvius five minutes before closing time, and
once or twice when Victoria had had no luck he succeeded like the
vulture on the stricken field.

Most of the others were dream figures; she lost count of them. After a
month she could not remember a face. She even forgot a big fellow whom
she had called Black Beauty, who came down from somewhere in Devonshire
for a monthly bust; he was so much offended that she had the
mortification of seeing him captured by one of the outer circle who sit
beyond the lights.

In the middle of August the streets she called London were deserted.
Steamy air, dust laden, floated over the pavements. The Vesuvius was
half empty, and she had to cut down her standards. Just as she was
contemplating moving to Folkestone for a month, however, she received a
letter from solicitors in the Strand, Bastable, Bastable & Sons,
informing her that 're Major Cairns deceased,' they were realising the
estate on behalf of the administrators, and that they would be obliged
if she would say when it would be convenient for her to convey the
furniture of Elm Tree Place into their hands. This perturbed Victoria
seriously. The furniture had a value, and besides it was the plant of a
flourishing business.

'Pity he died suddenly,' she thought, 'he'd have done something for m