It is a quiet club, with many members and sparse accommodation.  Its rooms are never crowded, because half of its members are afraid of meeting the other half.  It has swinging glass doors to its every apartment, the lower portion of the glass being opaque, while the upper moiety affords a peep-hole.  Thus, if you are sitting in one of the deep, comfortable chairs to be found in all these small rooms, you will be aware from time to time of eyes and a bald head above the ground glass.  If you are nobody, eyes and bald head will prove to be the property of a gentleman who does not know you, or knows you and pretends that he does not.  If you are somebody, your solitude will depend upon your reputation.

There are quite a number of bald heads in the Talleyrand Club—­bald heads surmounting youthful, innocent faces.  The innocence of these gentlemen is quite remarkable.  Like a certain celestial, they are “childlike and bland”; they ask guileless questions; they make blameless mistakes in respect to facts, and require correction, which they receive meekly.  They know absolutely nothing, and their thirst for information is as insatiable as it is unobtrusive.

The atmosphere is vivacious with the light sound of many foreign tongues; it bristles with the ephemeral importance of cheap titles.  One never knows whether one’s neighbor is an ornament to the Almanac de Gotha, or a disgrace to a degenerate colony of refugees.

Some are plain Messieurs, Senores, or Herren.  Bluff foreigners with upright hair and melancholy eyes, who put up philosophically with a cheaper brand of cigar than their souls love.  Among the latter may be classed Karl Steinmetz—­the bluffest of the bluff—­innocent even of his own innocence.

Karl Steinmetz in due course reached England, and in natural sequence the smoking-room—­room B on the left as you go in—­of the Talleyrand.

He was there one evening after an excellent dinner taken with humorous resignation, smoking the largest cigar the waiter could supply, when Claude de Chauxville happened to have nothing better or nothing worse to do.

De Chauxville looked through the glass door for some seconds.  Then he twisted his waxed mustache and lounged in.  Steinmetz was alone in the room, and De Chauxville was evidently—­almost obviously—­unaware of his presence.  He went to the table and proceeded to search in vain for a newspaper that interested him.  He raised his eyes casually and met the quiet gaze of Karl Steinmetz.

“Ah!” he exclaimed.

“Yes,” said Steinmetz.

“You—­in London?”

Steinmetz nodded gravely.

“Yes,” he repeated.

“One never knows where one has you,” Claude de Chauxville went on, seating himself in a deep arm-chair, newspaper in hand.  “You are a bird of passage.”

“A little heavy on the wing—­now,” said Steinmetz.

He laid his newspaper down on his stout knees and looked at De Chauxville over his gold eye-glasses.  He did not attempt to conceal the fact that he was wondering what this man wanted with him.  The baron seemed to be wondering what object Steinmetz had in view in getting stout.  He suspected some motive in the obesity.