vens!' cried young Ollyett suddenly. 'You _are_ Masquerier,
then? I thought you were!'

'Bat Masquerier.' He let the words fall with the weight of an
international ultimatum. 'Yes, that's all I am. But you have the
advantage of me, gentlemen.'

For the moment, while we were introducing ourselves, I was puzzled. Then
I recalled prismatic music-hall posters--of enormous acreage--that had
been the unnoticed background of my visits to London for years past.
Posters of men and women, singers, jongleurs, impersonators and
audacities of every draped and undraped brand, all moved on and off in
London and the Provinces by Bat Masquerier--with the long wedge-tailed
flourish following the final 'r.'

'_I_ knew you at once,' said Pallant, the trained M.P., and I promptly
backed the lie. Woodhouse mumbled excuses. Bat Masquerier was not moved
for or against us any more than the frontage of one of his own palaces.

'I always tell My people there's a limit to the size of the lettering,'
he said. 'Overdo that and the ret'na doesn't take it in. Advertisin' is
the most delicate of all the sciences.'

'There's one man in the world who is going to get a little of it if I
live for the next twenty-four hours,' said Woodhouse, and explained how
this would come about.

Masquerier stared at him lengthily with gunmetal-blue eyes.

'You mean it?' he drawled; the voice was as magnetic as the look.

'_I_ do,' said Ollyett. 'That business of the horn alone ought to have
him off the Bench in three months.' Masquerier looked at him even longer
than he had looked at Woodhouse.

'He told _me_,' he said suddenly, 'that my home-address was Jerusalem.
You heard that?'

'But it was the tone--the tone,' Ollyett cried.

'You noticed that, too, did you?' said Masquerier. 'That's the artistic
temperament. You can do a lot with it. And I'm Bat Masquerier,' he went
on. He dropped his chin in his fists and scowled straight in front of
him.... 'I made the Silhouettes--I made the Trefoil and the Jocunda. I
made 'Dal Benzaguen.' Here Ollyett sat straight up, for in common with
the youth of that year he worshipped Miss Vidal Benzaguen of the Trefoil
immensely and unreservedly. '"_Is_ that a dressing-gown or an ulster
you're supposed to be wearing?" You heard _that_?... "And I suppose you
hadn't time to brush your hair either?" You heard _that_?... Now, you
hear _me_!' His voice filled the coffee-room, then dropped to a whisper
as dreadful as a surgeon's b