In one of these side streets stood a house larger than its neighbours, in a bit of front garden, with some decrepit rust-bitten-railings between it and the road. It was an old dwelling overtaken by the flood of tenement houses, which spread north, south, east, and west of it. Its walls were no less grimy than its neighbours'; but its windows were outlined in cheerful white paint, firelight sparkled through its unshuttered panes, and a bright green door with a brass knocker completed its pleasant air. There were always children outside the Vicarage railings on winter evenings, held there by the spell of the green door and the firelight.
Inside the firelit room to the left of the front pathway, two men were standing—one of whom had just entered the house.
"My dear Penrose!—how very good of you to come. I know how frightfully busy you are."
The man addressed put down his hat and stick, and hastily smoothed back some tumbling black hair which interfered with spectacled eyes already hampered by short sight. He was a tall, lank, powerful fellow; anyone acquainted with the West-country would have known him for one of the swarthy, gray-eyed Cornish stock.
"I am pretty busy—but your tale, Herbert, was a startler. If I can help you—or Barnes—command me. He is coming this afternoon?"
Herbert French pointed his visitor to a chair.
"Of course. And another man—whom I met casually, in Pall Mall this morning—and had half an hour's talk with—an American naval officer—an old acquaintance of Elsie's—Captain Boyson—will join us also. I met him at Harvard before our wedding, and liked him. He has just come over with his sister for a short holiday, and I ran across him."
"Is there any particular point in his joining us?"
Herbert French expounded. Boyson had been an old acquaintance of Mrs. Roger Barnes before her marriage. He knew a good deal about the Barnes story—"feels, so I gathered, very strongly about it, and on the man's side; and when I told him that Roger had just arrived and was coming to take counsel with you and me this afternoon, he suddenly asked if he might come, too. I was rather taken aback. I told him that we were going, of course, to consider the case entirely from the English point of view. He still said, 'Let me come; I may be of use to you.' So I could only reply it must rest with Roger. They'll show him first into the dining-room."
Penrose nodded. "All right, as long as he doesn't mind his national toes trampled upon. So these are your new quarters, old fellow?"