and sole work of an artistic member who came one day with a formidable array of lumber and paint-pots and worked his will on the ancient wood.  Then you saw the brass plate and its fearful name, and beneath it the formal legal notice that this club was duly registered and so on, and if you were a member you went in, and if you weren’t a member you tinkled an electric bell and asked to see a member—­if you knew one.

Spargo was not a member, but he knew many members, and he tinkled the bell, and asked the boy who answered it for Mr. Starkey.  Mr. Starkey, a young gentleman with the biceps of a prize-fighter and a head of curly hair that would have done credit to Antinous, came forth in due course and shook Spargo by the hand until his teeth rattled.

“Had we known you were coming,” said Mr. Starkey, “we’d have had a brass band on the stairs.”

“I want to come in,” remarked Spargo.

“Sure!” said Mr. Starkey.  “That’s what you’ve come for.”

“Well, stand out of the way, then, and let’s get in,” said Spargo.  “Look here,” he continued when they had penetrated into a small vestibule, “doesn’t old Crowfoot turn in here about this time every night?”

“Every night as true as the clock, my son Spargo, Crowfoot puts his nose in at precisely eleven, having by that time finished that daily column wherein he informs a section of the populace as to the prospects of their spotting a winner tomorrow,” answered Mr. Starkey.  “It’s five minutes to his hour now.  Come in and drink till he comes.  Want him?”

“A word with him,” answered Spargo.  “A mere word—­or two.”

He followed Starkey into a room which was so filled with smoke and sound that for a moment it was impossible to either see or hear.  But the smoke was gradually making itself into a canopy, and beneath the canopy Spargo made out various groups of men of all ages, sitting around small tables, smoking and drinking, and all talking as if the great object of their lives was to get as many words as possible out of their mouths in the shortest possible time.  In the further corner was a small bar; Starkey pulled Spargo up to it.

“Name it, my son,” commanded Starkey.  “Try the Octoneumenoi very extra special.  Two of ’em, Dick.  Come to beg to be a member, Spargo?”

“I’ll think about being a member of this ante-room of the infernal regions when you start a ventilating fan and provide members with a route-map of the way from Fleet Street,” answered Spargo, taking his glass.  “Phew!—­what an atmosphere!”

“We’re considering a ventilating fan,” said Starkey.  “I’m on the house committee now, and I brought that very matter up at our last meeting.  But Templeson, of the Bulletin—­you know Templeson—­he says what we want is a wine-cooler to stand under that sideboard—­says no club is proper without a wine-cooler, and that he knows a chap—­second-hand dealer, don’t you know—­what has a beauty to dispose of in old Sheffield plate.  Now, if you were on our house committee, Spargo, old man, would you go in for the wine-cooler or the ventilating fan?  You see—­”