Presently the door flew open, and the vocalist entered in person, clad in a pink bathrobe and very tousled and rosy from the tub.

“Many happy returns of the day, Boots, old thing!”

Reggie burst rollickingly into song.

       “I’m twenty-one today! 
        Twenty-one today! 
        I’ve got the key of the door! 
        Never been twenty-one before! 
        And father says I can do what I like! 
          So shout Hip-hip-hooray! 
        I’m a jolly good fellow,
          Twenty-one today.”

Lord Belpher scowled morosely.

“I wish you wouldn’t make that infernal noise!”

“What infernal noise?”

“That singing!”

“My God!  This man has wounded me!” said Reggie.

“I’ve a headache.”

“I thought you would have, laddie, when I saw you getting away with the liquid last night.  An X-ray photograph of your liver would show something that looked like a crumpled oak-leaf studded with hob-nails.  You ought to take more exercise, dear heart.  Except for sloshing that policeman, you haven’t done anything athletic for years.”

“I wish you wouldn’t harp on that affair!”

Reggie sat down on the bed.

“Between ourselves, old man,” he said confidentially, “I also—­I myself—­Reginald Byng, in person—­was perhaps a shade polluted during the evening.  I give you my honest word that just after dinner I saw three versions of your uncle, the bishop, standing in a row side by side.  I tell you, laddie, that for a moment I thought I had strayed into a Bishop’s Beano at Exeter Hall or the Athenaeum or wherever it is those chappies collect in gangs.  Then the three bishops sort of congealed into one bishop, a trifle blurred about the outlines, and I felt relieved.  But what convinced me that I had emptied a flagon or so too many was a rather rummy thing that occurred later on.  Have you ever happened, during one of these feasts of reason and flows of soul, when you were bubbling over with joie-de-vivre—­have you ever happened to see things?  What I mean to say is, I had a deuced odd experience last night.  I could have sworn that one of the waiter-chappies was that fellow who knocked off your hat in Piccadilly.”

Lord Belpher, who had sunk back on to the pillows at Reggie’s entrance and had been listening to his talk with only intermittent attention, shot up in bed.

“What!”

“Absolutely!  My mistake, of course, but there it was.  The fellow might have been his double.”

“But you’ve never seen the man.”

“Oh yes, I have.  I forgot to tell you.  I met him on the links yesterday.  I’d gone out there alone, rather expecting to have a round with the pro., but, finding this lad there, I suggested that we might go round together.  We did eighteen holes, and he licked the boots off me.  Very hot stuff he was.  And after the game he took me off to his cottage and gave me a drink.  He lives at