For these men were the vultures of their respective Foreign Offices, and it was their business to be found where the carcass is.

“The chief difference between the gods and men is that man can only be in one place at a time,” Deulin had once said to Cartoner, twenty years his junior, in his light, philosophic way, when a turn of the wheel had rendered a long journey futile, and they found themselves far from that place where their services were urgently needed.

“If men could be in two places at the same moment, say once only during a lifetime, their lives would be very different from what they are.”  Cartoner had glanced quickly at him when he spoke, but only saw a ready, imperturbable smile.

Deulin was a man counting his friends among all nationalities.  The captain of a great steamship has perhaps as many acquaintances as may be vouchsafed to one man, and at the beginning of a voyage he has to assure a number of total strangers that he remembers them perfectly.  Deulin, during fifty-odd years of his life, had moved through a maze of men, remembering faces as a ship-captain must recollect those who have sailed with him, without attaching a name or being able to allot one saving quality to lift an individual out of the ruck.  For it is a lamentable fact that all men and all women are painfully like each other; it is only their faces that differ.  For God has made the faces, but men have manufactured their own thoughts.

Deulin had met a few who were not like the others, and one of these was Reginald Cartoner, who was thrown against him, as it were, in a professional manner when Deulin had been twenty years at the work.

“I always cross the road,” he said, “when I see Cartoner on the other side.  If I did not, he would go past.”

This he did in the literal sense the day after Cartoner landed in England on his return from America.  Deulin saw his friend emerge from a club in Pall Mall and walk westward, as if he had business in that direction.  Like many travellers, the Frenchman loved the open air.  Like all Frenchmen, he loved the streets.  He was idling in Pall Mall, avoiding a man here and there.  For we all have friends whom we are content to see pass by on the other side.  Deulin’s duty was, moreover, such that it got strangely mixed up with his pleasure, and it often happens that discretion must needs overcome a natural sociability.

Cartoner saw his friend approaching; for Deulin had the good fortune, or the misfortune, to be a distinguished-looking man, with a tall, spare form, a trim white mustache and imperial, and that air of calm possession of his environment which gives to some paupers the manner of a great land-owner.  He shook hands in silence, then turned and walked with Cartoner.

“I permit myself a question,” he said.  “When did you return from Cuba?”

“I landed at Liverpool last night.”

Cartoner turned in his abrupt way and looked his companion up and down.  Perhaps he was wondering for the hundredth time what might be buried behind those smiling eyes.