t also either mean or actually wrong.

Our next interruption was due to a newspaper reporter. He represented
several papers, among others one in New York. He had the names of all
of them printed on his card, but they did not impress Moyne. Our
waiter, who was beginning to swell with a sense of his own importance,
drove off that newspaper reporter. Three others, all of them
representing papers of high standing, sent in their cards in quick
succession. Moyne laid a sovereign on the table and told the waiter
that he could have it as a tip on condition that no one got into the
room while we were at dinner.

The waiter got the sovereign in the end; but he did not deserve it.
While we were drinking our coffee a young man overwhelmed our waiter
and forced his way into the room. There were two doors in our room,
which is one of what is called a suite. As the young man entered by
one, Moyne, leaving his coffee and his sovereign behind him, left by
the other. He shut it with a slam and locked it.

"Lord Moyne, I presume?" said the young man.

"Lord Moyne," I said, "has just left."

"May I ask," he said, "if I have the honour of addressing Mr.
McNeice?"

I explained that I was not McNeice. Then, in order to get him to go
away, if possible, I added that I was not Malcolmson, or Cahoon, or
Conroy, or the Dean.

"If you'll pardon my curiosity," he said, "I should like to ask--"

I saw that I should be obliged to tell him who I was in the end. I
told him at once, adding that I was a person of no importance
whatever, and that I had no views of any kind on what he would no
doubt want to call "the situation."

"May I ask you one question?" he said. "Is Lord Moyne going to take
the chair to-morrow?"

"Yes," I said, "he is. But if you're going to print what I say in any
paper I won't speak another word."

"As a matter of fact," he said, "the wires are blocked. There's a man
in the post office writing as hard as he can and handing one sheet
after another across the counter as quick as he can write them. Nobody
else can send anything."

"Clithering, I expect."

"Very likely. Seems to fancy himself a bit, whoever he is. Nobody else
can get a message through."

He seemed an agreeable young man. Moyne had probably gone to bed and I
did not want to spend a lonely evening.

"Have a glass of claret," I said.

He sat down and poured himself off half a tumbler-full. Then it struck
him that he owed me some return for my hospital