This distressing illusion of Sir Paul’s was probably due to his carbuncles, which of all pathological phenomena are among the most productive of a pessimistic philosophy.  The carbuncles were well known up and down Harley Street.  They were always to be cured and they never were cured.  They must have cost their owner about as much as his motor-car for upkeep—­what with medical fees, travelling and foreign hotels—­and nobody knew whether they remained uncured because they were incurable or because the medical profession thought it would be cruel at one stroke to deprive itself of a regular income and Sir Paul of his greatest hobby.  The strange thing was that Sir Paul with all his powerful general sagacity and shrewdness, continued firmly, despite endless disappointments, in the mystical faith that one day the carbuncles would be abolished.

“I won’t beat about the bush,” said he.  “We know one another.  I came here to talk frankly and I’ll talk frankly.”

“You go right ahead,” Mr. Prohack benevolently encouraged him.

“First of all I should like to give you just the least hint of warning against that fellow Softly Bishop.  I daresay you know something’ about him—­”

“I know nothing about him, except the way he looks down his nose.  But no man who looks down his nose the way he looks down his nose is going to influence me in the management of my financial affairs.  I’m only an official; I should be a lamb in the City; but I have my safeguards, old chap.  Thanks for the tip all the same.”

Sir Paul Spinner laughed hoarsely, as Mr. Prohack had made him laugh hundreds of times in the course of their friendship.  And Mr. Prohack was aware of a feeling of superiority to Sir Paul.  The feeling grew steadily in his breast, and he was not quite sure how it originated.  Perhaps it was due to a note of dawning obsequiousness in Sir Paul’s laugh, reminding Mr. Prohack of the ancient proverb that the jokes of the exalted are always side-splitting.

“As I say,” Sir Paul proceeded, “you and I know each other.”

Mr. Prohack nodded, with a trace of impatience against unnecessary repetition.  Yet he was suddenly struck with the odd thought that Sir Paul certainly did not know him, but only odd bits of him; and he was doubtful whether he knew Sir Paul.  He saw an obese man of sixty sitting in the very chair that a few moments ago had been occupied by Carthew the chauffeur, a man with big purplish features and a liverish eye, a man smoking a plutocratic and heavenly cigar and eating it at the same time, a man richly dressed and braided and jewelled, a man whose boots showed no sign of a crease, an obvious millionaire of the old type, in short a man who was practically all prejudices and waste-products.  And he wondered why and how that man had become his friend and won his affection.  Sir Paul looked positively coarse in Mr. Prohack’s frail Chippendale drawing-room, seeming to need for