many people in the world are called Adrian Boldero?"

"Thousands," said I.

She pished again and tossed her pretty head.

"I'll go and telephone straight away to Adrian and find out all about
it."

She departed through the library door into the recesses of the house
where the telephone has its being. I resumed consideration of my
presidential address. But Hafiz eluded me, and Adrian occupied my
thoughts. I took up the paper and read the review again; and the more I
read, the more absurd did it seem to me that the author of "The Diamond
Gate" and my Adrian Boldero could be one and the same person.

You see, we had, all four of us, Adrian, Jaffery Chayne, Tom Castleton
and myself, been at Cambridge together, and formed after the manner of
youth a somewhat incongruous brotherhood. We knew one another's
shortcomings to a nicety and whenever three of the quartette were
gathered together, the physical prowess, the morals and the intellectual
capacity of the absent fourth were discussed with admirable lack of
reticence. So it came to pass that we gauged one another pretty
accurately and remained devoted friends. There were other men, of
course, on the fringe of the brotherhood, and each of us had our little
separate circle; we did not form a mutual admiration society and
advertise ourselves as a kind of exclusive, Athos, Porthos, Aramis and
d'Artagnan swashbucklery; but, in a quiet way, we recognised our
quadruple union of hearts, and talked amazing rubbish and committed
unspeakable acts of lunacy and dreamed impossible dreams in a very
delightful, and perhaps unsuspected, intimacy. We were now in our middle
and late thirties--all save poor Tom Castleton, over whom, in an alien
grave, the years of the Lord passed unheeded. Poor old chap! He was the
son of the acting-manager of a well-known theatre and used to talk to us
of the starry theatre-folk, his family intimates, as though they were
haphazard occupants of an omnibus. How we envied him! And he was forever
writing plays which he read to us; which plays, I remember, were always
on the verge of being produced by Irving. We believed in him firmly. He
alone of the little crew had a touch of genius.

Blond, bull-necked Jaffery who rowed in the college boat, and would
certainly have got his blue if he had been amenable to discipline and,
because he was not, got sent down ingloriously from the University at
the beginning of his third year, certainly did not show a sign of i