As you say, there is no harm in it, and if Captain Fraser had simply dropped me a hint I could have saved him from dropping a good sum of money.

Not that you would have liked that, eh ?" The two duplicate clergymen, who were sipping their Burgundy with two duplicate grins, laughed heartily at this, and one of them carelessly pulled off his whiskers and laid them on the table.
"Basil," I said, "if you are my friend, save me.

What is all this ?" He laughed again.
"Only another addition, Cherub, to your collection of Queer Trades.
These two gentlemen (whose health I have now the pleasure of drinking) are Professional Detainers." "And what on earth's that ?" I asked.
"It's really very simple, Mr Swinburne," began he who had once been the Rev.Ellis Shorter, of Chuntsey, in Essex; and it gave me a shock indescribable to hear out of that pompous and familiar form come no longer its own pompous and familiar voice, but the brisk sharp tones of a young city man.

"It is really nothing very important.

We are paid by our clients to detain in conversation, on some harmless pretext, people whom they want out of the way for a few hours.