you know Colonel Grey?"

"Oh, yes. He was here a lot up to a little while ago. Then he had a row,
the inevitable row, with Lord Loudwater, and he hasn't been here since.
He dropped on to Lord Loudwater for bullying Lady Loudwater, and he
didn't drop on him lightly either. Hell, I fancy, was what he gave him."

"Yes; I gathered that something of the kind had taken place. What kind of
a man is the Colonel?" said Mr. Flexen carelessly.

"The best man in the world not to have a row with. He's a cold terror,"
said Mr. Manley, in a tone of enthusiastic conviction. "He always seems
rather cooler than a cucumber. But my belief is that that coolness is
just the mask of really violent emotions. I saw them working once. I came
in on the end of his row with Loudwater--just the end of it--my goodness!
From my point of view, the dramatist's, you know, he's the most
interesting person in the county--bar Lady Loudwater, of course."

"I should never have thought him a terror," said Mr. Flexen, in a tone of
somewhat incredulous surprise. "I had a talk with him this evening about
Lord Loudwater's death, and he seemed to me to be a pleasant enough
fellow and an excellent soldier. I take it that he's very keen on his
career in the Army?"

"Not a bit of it. The war is merely a side issue with him," said Mr.
Manley in an assured tone. "I know from what he told me himself. We were
talking over our experiences."

"But, hang it all! he's a V. C.!" cried Mr. Flexen.

"Yes, he's a V. C. all right. But that's because he's one of those men
who have the knack of taking an interest in everything they turn their
hands to, and doing it well. But his two passions are Chinese art and
women," said Mr. Manley.

"Women?" said Mr. Flexen. "He didn't strike me as being that kind of man
at all. He seemed a quite simple, straightforward soldier."

"Simplicity and a passion for Chinese art don't go together--at least,
not what is usually called simplicity," said Mr. Manley dryly. "A friend
of mine, who knows all about him, told me that he had had more really
serious love affairs than any other man in London. He seems to be one of
those men who fall in love hard every time they fall in love. He said
that it was one of the mysteries of the polite world how he had kept out
of the Divorce Court."

"Sounds an odd type," said Mr. Flexen, storing up the information, and
marking how little it agreed with his own observation of Colonel Grey.
"And you say that