Fate Cannot Harm Me by J. C. Masterman

of conversation rolling.
    â€œLet me see,” he went on, “did you say that you’d dined here before?”
    â€œYes. I came here once to dine with Basil Paraday-Royne just before I left England. He and his great pal Hedley, and, I think, another man whom I’ve forgotten. Do they come here much now? I remember that Basil was very enthusiastic about the place, and, I thought, a little too obviously pleased that he was a member and the others weren’t.”
    Monty looked at me with a curious, inquiring smile. When he spoke his voice had lost something of its irresponsible gaiety, and he seemed to choose his words.
    â€œWhat is this magic that you have?” he asked.
    â€œMagic? What do you mean?”
    â€œI mean just this. You may come here this year and you won’t see Paraday-Royne or Hedley; you may come next year—you won’t see them then either. Afterthat”—he shrugged his shoulders—“who can tell? Time makes people forget, and one or other of them may return, but somehow I doubt it. Myself, I don’t believe that either of them will ever sit in this room again. But here’s the magic. You ask me to tell you, the returned exile, the history of London town during the last three years. I make no plan; I purpose just to prattle of this and that as fancy dictates to me. And then in your first sentence you mention two men, and at once I realize that round these two the whole history of my world—of our world—has centred all the time that you have been away. Yes. I’m going to keep my promise, but not quite in the manner you expected, or I had proposed. I’m going to tell you just exactly why you won’t meet Paraday-Royne or Hedley in the Trufflers, and for that matter in any other London club. And when I’ve finished I think you’ll agree that I’ve kept my part of the bargain. But come on, dinner is ready, and we’ll start the story there. It’s the door on your left; lead on.”
    We entered the dining-room, and the archbishop himself motioned us to a table in an alcove—a little withdrawn from the rest of the room. His reverent gaze seemed to direct a benison upon us; an almost imperceptible gesture directed one of his satellites to attend to our unspoken wants. He withdrew; we were seated.
    Monty’s brief interval of seriousness had left him.
    â€œFor God’s sake,” he said, “if I may misquote Conan Doyle, for God’s sake don’t miss the caviare. It is, if I may say so in all humility, what caviare should be. The old sturgeon can’t do better than this.”
    He selected with care a thin slice of toast and delicately, almost lovingly, smeared it with caviare. And then, a little haltingly at first, as though he were marshalling his facts, he began to speak.
    â€œParaday-Royne, Hedley. Hedley, Paraday-Royne. Their history is one; it’s a sort of double biography like Fox and Pitt or Gladstone and Dizzy. You can’t tellthe story of one of them without telling the story of the other. Story? No, it’s more than a story, it’s a saga. That’s the word. A saga. No one, I suppose, has ever heard the whole thing from beginning to end, though every one has heard a chapter here and there. But I’m going to tell it you all to-night, partly because you asked for it, partly because I want to. Yes, the whole thing—for you won’t get the truth unless you hear it all. In a way I feel your question to be a sort of challenge. While you’ve been away I’ve written a good deal, articles, and stories—you can guess the sort of thing—and even a play, which had quite a decent run.”
    He smiled, and I murmured congratulations.
    â€œOh, thank you, yes, they got across pretty well; not exactly Edgar Wallace sales or anything like that, but still all I could expect and a bit more. So you see I’ve become, among other things, a bit of a