The three men looked at each other steadily and long, then the two visitors bowed and turned to go. But, just as they were moving off towards the lift dome, Zorilla turned back and held out a card to Don Mendoza. It was an ordinary visiting card with a name engraved upon it.
Morse took it, looked at the name, and then stood still and frozen in his tracks.
He did not move until the whirr of the bell and the clang of the gate told him the roof-garden was his own again.
Then he staggered to the table like a drunken man, sank into a chair and bowed his head upon the gleaming pearl and crimson.
CHAPTER ONE
When my father died and left me his large fortune I also inherited that very successful London newspaper, the Evening Special. I decided to edit it myself.
To be six-and-twenty, to live at high pressure, to go everywhere, see everything, know everybody, and above all to have Power, this is success in life. I would not have changed my position in London for the Premiership.
On the evening of Lady Brentford's dance, I dined alone in my Piccadilly flat. There was nothing much doing in the way of politics and I had been playing golf at Sandown the whole of the day. I hadn't seen the paper until now, when Preston brought it in—the last edition—and I opened it over my coffee.
There were, and are, few things that I love better than the Evening Special. I claim for it that it is the most up-to-date evening newspaper in England, bright and readable from the word "go," and singularly accurate in all its information.