general atmosphere of the scene suggested a blend of the railway station at Cologne, the Hotel Bristol in any European capital, and the second act in most musical comedies. A score of brilliant and brilliantined pages decorated the foreground, while Hebraic-looking gentlemen, wearing tartan waistcoats of the clans of their adoption, flitted restlessly between the tape machines and telephone boxes. The army of occupation had obviously established a firm footing in the hospitable premises; a kaleidoscopic pattern of uniforms, sky-blue, indigo, and bottle-green, relieved the civilian attire of the groups that clustered in lounge and card rooms and corridors. Yeovil rapidly came to the conclusion that the joys of membership were not for him. He had turned to go, after a very cursory inspection of the premises and their human occupants, when he was hailed by a young man, dressed with strenuous neatness, whom he remembered having met in past days at the houses of one or two common friends.
Hubert Herlton’s parents had brought him into the world, and some twenty-one years later had put him into a motor business. Having taken these pardonable liberties they had completely exhausted their ideas of what to do with him, and Hubert seemed unlikely to develop any ideas of his own on the subject. The motor business elected to conduct itself without his connivance; journalism, the stage, tomato culture (without capital), and other professions that could be entered on at short notice were submitted to his consideration by nimble-minded relations and friends. He listened to their suggestions with polite indifference, being rude only to a cousin who demonstrated how he might achieve a settled income of from two hundred to a thousand pounds a year by the propagation of mushrooms in a London basement. While his walk in life was still an undetermined promenade his parents died, leaving him with a carefully-invested income of thirty-seven pounds a year. At that point of his career Yeovil’s knowledge of him stopped short; the journey to Siberia had taken him beyond the range of Herlton’s domestic vicissitudes.
The young man greeted him in a decidedly friendly manner.
“I didn’t know you were a member here,” he exclaimed.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever been in the club,” said Yeovil, “and I fancy it will be the last. There is rather too much of the fighting machine in evidence here. One doesn’t want a perpetual reminder of what has happened staring one in the face.”
“We tried at first to keep the alien element out,” said Herlton apologetically, “but we couldn’t have carried on the club if we’d stuck to that line. You see we’d lost more than two-thirds of our old members so we couldn’t afford to be exclusive. As a matter of fact the whole thing was decided over our heads; a new syndicate took over the concern, and a new committee was installed, with a good many foreigners on it. I know it’s horrid having these uniforms flaunting all over the place, but what is one to do?”
Yeovil said nothing, with the air of a man who could have said a great deal.
“I suppose you wonder, why remain a member under those conditions?” continued Herlton. “Well, as far as I am concerned, a place like this is a necessity for me. In fact, it’s my profession, my source of income.”
“Are you as good at bridge as all that?” asked Yeovil; “I’m a fairly successful player myself, but I should be sorry to have to live on my winnings, year in, year out.”
“I don’t play cards,” said Herlton, “at least not for serious stakes. My winnings or losings wouldn’t come to a tenner in an average year. No, I live by commissions, by introducing likely buyers to would-be sellers.”
“Sellers of what?” asked Yeovil.
“Anything, everything; horses, yachts, old masters, plate, shootings, poultry-farms, week-end cottages, motor cars, almost anything you can think of. Look,” and he produced from his breast pocket a bulky note-book illusorily inscribed “engagements.”
“Here,” he explained, tapping the book, “I’ve got a double entry of every likely client that I know, with a note of the things he may have to sell and the things he may want to buy. When it is something that he has for sale there are cross-references to likely purchasers of that particular line of article. I don’t limit myself to things that I actually know people to be in want of, I go further than that and have theories, carefully indexed theories, as to the things that people might want to buy. At the right moment, if I can get the opportunity, I mention the article that is in my mind’s eye to the possible purchaser who has also been in my mind’s eye, and I frequently bring off a sale. I started a chance acquaintance on a career of print-buying the other day merely by telling him of a couple of good prints that I knew of, that were to be had at a quite reasonable price; he is a man with more money than he knows what to do with, and he has laid out quite a lot on old prints since his first purchase. Most of his collection he has got through me, and of course I net a commission on each transaction. So you see, old man, how useful, not to say necessary, a club with a large membership is to me. The more mixed and socially chaotic it is, the more serviceable it is.”
“Of course,” said Yeovil, “and I suppose, as a matter of fact, a good many of your clients belong to the conquering race.”
“Well, you see, they are the people who have got the money,” said Herlton; “I don’t mean to say that the invading Germans are usually people of wealth, but while they live over here they escape the crushing taxation that falls on the British-born subject. They serve their country as soldiers, and we have to serve it in garrison money, ship money and so forth, besides the ordinary taxes
