“No,” said Colin Rayne.  “You will remember I always differed from all of you, but it seems that I am wrong too.  I pictured him as a tall, melancholy man, with a conical bald head and with a habit of plucking at a black straggling beard—­something like the portraits of Tennyson.”

“To me,” said Luttrell, “he was always fat and fussy, with white spats.”

“But why are you interested in him at all?” cried Hillyard.

“We will explain the affair to you on the balcony,” answered Luttrell, as he rose.

They moved into the dark and coolness of this spacious place, and, stretching themselves in comfort on the long cane chairs, they explained to Hillyard this great mystery.  Rayne began the tale.

“You see, we don’t get a mail here so very often.  Consequently we pay attention when it comes.  We read the Searchlight, for instance, with care.”

Mr. Blacker snatched the narrative away at this point.

“And Sir Chichester Splay occurs in most issues and in many columns.  At first we merely noticed him.  Some one would say, ’Oh, here’s old Splay again,’ as if—­it seems incredible now—­the matter was of no importance.  It needed Luttrell to discover the real significance of Sir Chichester, the man’s unique and astounding quality.”

Harry Luttrell interrupted now.

“Yes, it was I,” he said with pride.  “Sir Chichester one day was seen at a Flower Show in Chelsea.  On another he attended the first performance of a play.  On a third day he honoured the Private View of an Exhibition of Pictures.  On a fourth he sat amongst the Distinguished Strangers in the Gallery of the House of Commons.  But that was all!  This is what I alone perceived.  Always that was all!”

Luttrell leaned back and relit his cigar.

“When other people come to be mentioned in the newspapers day after day, sooner or later some information about them slips out, some characteristic thing.  If you don’t get to know their appearance, you learn at all events their professions, their opinions.  But of Sir Chichester Splay—­never anything at all.  Yet he is there always, nothing can happen without his presence, a man without a shadow, a being without a history.  To me, a simple soldier, he is admirable beyond words.  For he has achieved the inconceivable.  He combines absolute privacy of life with a world-wide notoriety.  He may be a stamp-collector.  Do I know that?  No.  All I know is that if there were an Exhibition of Stamp Collections, he would be the first to pass the door.”  Luttrell rose from his chair.

“Therefore,” he added in conclusion, “Sir Chichester is of great value to us at Senga.  We elected him to the mess with every formality, and some day, when we have leisure, we shall send a deputation up the Nile to shoot a Mrs. Grey’s Antelope to decorate Rackham Park.”  He turned to Hillyard.  “We have a few yards to walk, and it is time.”

The two friends walked down the stairs and turned along the road, Hillyard still debating what was, after all, the value of Sir Chichester Splay to the Senga mess.  It had seemed to him that Luttrell had not wished for further questions on the balcony, but, now that the two were alone, he asked: