s and
business, beneath which had been appended the names of two of my
sponsors. I had had a blue seal pinned beneath my coat lapel and an
engraved card sewn in my chemise. After which precautions and rigmarole
I was admitted each evening by the gorgeous St. Peter in red zouave
breeches and drum major's jacket who guarded the outer portal.

Have I given the impression that, once inside, I assumed virtues which
ill became me; that I sat apart and watched with critical eyes the
merriment around me? Then let the impression be forever blasted. I am
not a virtuous man according to theological standards. I have been a
hardened sinner since birth. I gamble. Beer is my favourite drink. It
has been flatteringly whispered into my ear that I dance beautifully. I
read Cellini and Rabelais and Boccaccio with unfeigned delight. I am
enchanted by the music of Charpentier and Wolf-Ferrari. I smoke strong
cigars. And I do not flee at the sight of beautiful women. In short, I
am a man of sin. Born in iniquity (according to the moral fathers) I
have never been regenerated. Therefore let me admit that the spirit of
the vice crusader was not mine as a member of the Astor Club. I spent
many a delightful half-hour chatting with Heloise Dessault, formerly at
Fouquet's in Champs Elysees; with Mizzi Schwarz, one-time frequenter of
the Cafe de l'Europe, in Vienna; with Hedwig Zinkeisen, of Berlin's
Palais de Danse....

Here is a characteristic thing about the London supper club: the
majority of the girls and--to London's shame let it be noted--the more
attractive girls are all from the Continent. Without these feminine
importations I doubt if the supper clubs could be maintained. At the
musical galleries--a third-rate supper place run by the Musical and
Theatrical Club at 30 Whitfield Street, near Tottenham Court Road, W.--I
was approached and greeted by a little French girl, whose knowledge of
English was almost as limited as is my knowledge of Russian.

But I was forgetting Elsie Winwood, and to forget Elsie in this
shameless chronicle would be disloyalty. At the Astor Club one evening I
met her. I realised then what that intimating smile had meant when, the
week before, she had met me on the stairs. I thereupon forgot Leonard,
and visited the night debaucheries of London in the company of the
grey-eyed, auburn-haired Elsie. I have every reason to believe that ere
I sailed back to America I had sounded the depths of London's
iniquities. By s