Helmsley drew further back into the corner where he sat, and restrained the little dog Charlie from perking its inquisitive head out too far, lest its beauty should attract undesirable attention.

His nervous misgivings concerning the owner of the motor-car had not been entirely without foundation, for both Reginald Wrotham and James Brookfield were well known to him.

Wrotham's career had been a sufficiently disgraceful one ever since he had entered his teens,--he was a modern degenerate of the worst type, and though his coming-of-age and the assumption of his family title had caused certain time-servers to enrol themselves among his flatterers and friends, there were very few decent houses where so soiled a member of the aristocracy as he was could find even a semblance of toleration.

James Brookfield was a proprietor of newspapers as well as a "something in the City," and if Helmsley had been asked to qualify that "something" by a name, he would have found a term by no means complimentary to the individual in question.

Wrotham and Brookfield were always seen together,--they were brothers in every sort of social iniquity and licentiousness, and an attempt on Brookfield's part to borrow some thousands of pounds for his "lordly" patron from Helmsley, had resulted in the latter giving the would-be borrower's go-between such a strong piece of his mind as he was not likely to forget.