It was a restaurant all right, but entirely different from anything Vance had ever before visited.
The tone of the place was wholly English, as Dudley had intimated to his companion, and the bill of fare was limited to broiled meats and fish, fowl, oysters and rarebits.
The place was chiefly noted for its fine old English ales.
For all that, Bagley’s was a notorious place.
Its frequenters were mostly crooks, gamblers and politicians.
Curiosity and its famous cuisine, however, brought thither a sprinkling of the better classes—men about town, salesmen and their out-of-town customers, lawyers, brokers, merchants, and the sons of rich parents who thought it the correct thing to be seen there.
The upper floors were divided into supper rooms for ladies and their escorts, and it was quite a fad among the upper crust of Kansas City aristocracy to drop in there after the theater.
Mr. Bagley himself, rotund and red-faced, lounged in a big easy chair behind the cashier’s desk near the entrance.
The room was nearly crowded at that hour, and while Vance was surveying the place with much interest a waiter approached Dudley and handed him a card.
“We’ll go upstairs, Vance,” said the dapper gentleman gaily. “I’ll introduce you to a friend of mine.”