“Of course I was there, next day at noon. The place was a pub called The Crown and Two Chairmen, and when I asked for Mr Holroyd I was directed upstairs to a big room, in which there were a few people. Holroyd was one of them, and he nodded to me to wait.

“Queer room. Just an empty space, with some chairs piled in a corner, and a few odds and ends of pillars, and obelisks and altar-like boxes, which I knew were Masonic paraphernalia, also stacked against a wall. It was one of those rooms common enough in London, where lodges met, and little clubs had their gatherings, and which theatrical people rented by the day for rehearsal space.

“The people who were there were grouped around a man who was plainly the boss. He was short, but by God he had presence; you would have noticed him anywhere. He wore a hat, but not as I had ever seen a hat worn before. Willard and Charlie were hat men, but somehow their hats always looked sharp and dishonest—you know, too much down on one side? Holroyd wore a hat, a hard hat of the kind that Winston Churchill made famous later; a sort of top hat that had lost courage and hadn’t grown the last three inches, or acquired any gloss. As I came to know Holroyd I sometimes wondered if he had been born in that hat and overcoat, because I hardly ever saw him without both. But this little man’s hat looked as if it should have had a plume in it. It was a perfectly ordinary, expensive felt hat, but he gave it an air of costume, and when he looked from under the brim you felt he was sizing up your costume, too. And that was what he was doing. He took a look at me and said, in a kind of mumble, ‘That’s your find, eh? Doesn’t look much, does he, mph? Not quite as if he might pass for your humble, what? Eh, Holroyd? Mph?’

“ ‘That’s for you to say, of course,’ said Holroyd.

“ ‘Then I say no. Must look again. Must be something better than that, eh?’

“ ‘Won’t you see him do a few tricks?’

“ ‘Need I? Surely the appearance is everything, mph?’

“ ‘Not everything, Guvnor. The tricks are pretty important. At least the way you’ve laid it out makes the tricks very important. And the tightrope, too. He’d look quite different dressed up.’

“ ‘Of course. But I don’t think he’ll do. Look again, eh, like a good chap?’

“ ‘Whatever you say, Guvnor. But I’d have bet money on this one. Let him flash a trick or two, just to see.’

“The little man wasn’t anxious to waste time on me, but I didn’t mean to waste time either. I threw a couple of decks in the air, made them do a fancy twirl, and let them slip back into my hands. Then I twirled on my toes, and made the decks do it again, in a spiral, which looks harder than it is. There was clapping from a corner—the kind of soft clapping women produce by clapping in gloves they don’t want to split. I bowed toward the corner, and that was the first time I saw Milady.