Alpha Book

He therefore breakfasted leisurely; and he was still scanning the real
estate columns of a morning paper when Mrs. Greeve came panting to his
door and ushered in a file of rather sleepy but important looking
gentlemen, evidently unaccustomed to being abroad so early, and bored to
death with their experience.
They were men he knew only formally, or, at best, merely as fellow club
members; men whom he met when a dance or dinner took him out of the less
pretentious sets he personally affected; men whom the newspapers and the
public knew too well to speak of as "well known."
First there was Percy Draymore, overgroomed for a gentleman, fat,
good-humoured, and fashionable--one of the famous Draymore family noted
solely for their money and their tight grip on it; then came Sanxon
Orchil, the famous banker and promoter, small, urbane, dark, with that
rich almost oriental coloring which he may have inherited from his
Cordova ancestors who found it necessary to dehumanise their names when
Rome offered them the choice with immediate eternity as alternative.


Pages:
265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289