Indeed, even while he was speaking the wheels of Fate had already begun to revolve.
When Carol and Dora returned from their ride Dora found a letter waiting for her. She opened it, glanced quickly over the page and then said:
"Carol, how will this suit you for this evening? I think a night out would do you good after your little shake-up this morning. Listen—
"Dear Dora,
"Yesterday I became a happy bachelor for a fortnight. Encumbrances gone to Folkestone. If you have nothing better to do, meet me at the 'West End' at 7.30 this evening, and, if possible, bring Miss Vane, as I am bringing a friend, who, after my description of her—don't be jealous!—is quite anxious to meet her. He is good looking and very well off, and I think she will like him.
"Hoping you will both be able to come,
"Yours ever,
"Bernard."
"That sounds promising," said Miss Carol. "If he's that sort, and nice as well, and has plenty of the necessary, I shouldn't mind if he took me on as a sort of permanence. Somehow, after last night and this morning, I've got sick of this general knocking-about. Besides, it's no class. All right, I'll come. A bit of a kick-up will do me good, I think. That talk with the old gentleman this morning gave me quite a number 25 hump, though the ride has worked a good bit of it off. Now let's feed, I'm hungry enough to dine off cold boiled block ornaments."
Mr. Bernard Falcon, the writer of the letter to Dora, was principal partner in the somewhat incongruously named firm of solicitors, Messrs. Falcon and Lambe, of Mansion House Chambers, E.C. The firm did all sorts of work, provided only that it paid; the highest class under their style, and the other sorts—the money-lending and "speculative business"—through their own "jackals," that is to say seedy and broken-down solicitors who had made a failure of their own business, but had managed to keep on the Rolls and were not above doing "commission work" for more prosperous firms.
Mr. Lambe, away from his business, was a most excellent person; a good husband and father, a regular church-goer, and a generous supporter of all good works in and about Denmark Hill, where he lived. He was one of those strangely constituted men—of whom there are multitudes in the world—who will earn money by the most questionable, if not absolutely dishonest, methods, without a qualm of conscience, and give liberally of that same money without recognising for a moment that what they honestly believe they are giving to God, is a portion of the Wages of Sin—which, as good Christians, they ought never to have earned.
Mr. Bernard Falcon, on the other hand, in his private life, aimed at nothing more than respectability in the worst sense of the word. His wife and his two little girls went to church. He himself went on Sunday mornings when he had no more pressing engagements. His name appeared regularly on the subscription lists published in connection with St. Michael's, Brondesbury, his parish church, and he also paid the rent of No. 15, Melville Gardens, Brook Green, in addition to one hundred and fifty pounds a year as what he would have called "a retainer" to Miss Dora Russell—to say nothing of certain milliner's and jeweller's bills which he liquidated, sometimes cheerfully and sometimes grudgingly, according to his humour and their amount.
When Carol and Dora got out of their cab at the door of the "West End" and went into the little vestibule-bar to the left, they found two men in evening dress waiting for them. One of them—a man of about forty, bald on the temples, of medium height, well-fed and well-groomed, and not by any means bad-looking, though of an entirely mediocre type—Carol greeted with the easy familiarity of old acquaintance, for she had known him for nearly a year as Dora's 'particular friend.' The other, tall, well-built, handsome, and with that unmistakable stamp of breeding on him which Mr. Bernard Falcon totally lacked, she instantly recognised as Reginald Garthorne, her intended companion for the evening.
The first thing he did when they had been introduced by Bernard Falcon, was to apologise for what he had said in front of the Criterion the night before. He did it with admirably calculated deference, and in such perfectly chosen words, that it was quite impossible for her not to accept his apology and "make friends."