He was short of stature with protruding bloodshot eyes, an undulating nose, slightly prognathous muzzle and full lips, and a harsh red moustache which enhanced the prognathism.  His silk hat tilted back showed a great bald forehead, in which angry, bluish veins stood out like swollen earth worms.  “Those Suffragettes!” he was shouting or rather shrieking in a nasal whine, “if I had my way, I’d lay ’em out along the course and have ’em ——­ by ——.  The ——­’s!”

The shocked auditory around him drew away.  Vivie gathered he was Mr. ——­ well, perhaps I had better not give his name,[1] even in a disguised form.  He had had a chequered career in South America—­Mexico oil, Peruvian rubber, Buenos Aires railways, and a corner in Argentine beef—­but had become exceedingly rich, a fortune perhaps of twenty millions.  He had given five times more than any other aspirant in benefactions to charities and to the party chest of the dominant Party, but the authorities dared not reward him with a baronetcy because of the stories of his early life which had to be fought out in libel cases with Baxendale Strangeways and others.  But he had won through these libel cases, and now devoted his vast wealth to improving our breed of horses by racing at Newmarket, Epsom, Doncaster, Gatwick, Sandown and Brighton.  Racing had, in fact, become to him what Auction Bridge was to the Society gamblers of those days, only instead of losing and winning tens and hundreds of pounds, his fluctuations in gains and losses were in thousands, generally with a summing up on the right side of the annual account.  But whether on the Turf, at the billiard table, or in the stock market he was or had become a bad loser.  He lost his temper at the same time.  On this occasion Miss Davison’s suicide or martyrdom would leave him perhaps on the wrong side in making up his day’s book to the extent of fifteen hundred pounds.  Viewed in the right proportion it would be equivalent to our—­you and me—­having given a florin to a newspaper boy as the train was moving, instead of a penny.  But no doubt her unfortunate impulse had spoiled the day for him in other ways, upset schemes that were bound up with the winning of the King’s horse.  Yet his outburst and the shocking language he applied to the Suffrage movement made history:  for they fixed on him Vivie’s attention when she was looking out for some one or something on whom to avenge the loss of a comrade.

  [Footnote 1:  He died in 1917.  My jury of matrons has excised his
  phrases.]

She forthwith set out for London and wrote up the dossier of Mr. ——.  In the secret list of buildings which were to be destroyed by fire or bombs, with as little risk as possible to human or animal life, she noted down the racing stables, trainers’ houses and palaces of Mr. ——­ at Newmarket, Epsom, the Devil’s Dyke, and the neighbourhood of Doncaster.