"Go on, Pat," said Arthur.

"Sure then, since we all love the same lady, that ought to bind us more together than anything else has ever done. But since we cannot all marry her, let us agree, in the first place, that no outsider ever shall."

"Hurrah!" said Arthur—I could see that he was fearfully excited—throwing his glass into the fireplace with a crash.

"I am with you, Pat!" I cried. "It's to be one of us three, and we are in league against all the other men in London. And now the question is—"

"Hear my plan. This very night we'll draw lots as to which of us shall have the first chance. The man who wins shall have the entire support of the other two in every possible way. If she accepts him, then the fates have spoken. If she doesn't, then the next man in the draw shall have his chance, and the rejected suitor and the poor third man shall help him to the utmost of their ability. Is that clear?"

He stopped and looked down at us from his great height with a smiling and anxious face.

Dear old Pat, I shall always love to think that the proposal came from him, straight, clean and true, as he always was.

"So be it," Arthur echoed solemnly. "The league shall begin this very night. Do either of you chaps know any Spanish, by the way?"

We shook our heads.

"Well, I do," he continued, "and we'll form ourselves into a Santa Hermandad—'The Holy Brotherhood'—it was the name of an old Spanish Society of chivalry ever so many years ago."

"Santa Hermandad!" Pat shouted, "and now to shake hands on it. I think we'll not be needing to take an oath."

Our three hands were clasped together in an instant and we knew that, come what might, each would be true to that bond.

"And now," I said, "to draw lots as to who shall be the first to try his chance. How shall we settle it?"

"There's no fairer way," said Arthur, "than the throw of a die. Have you any poker dice, Tom?"

"Yes, I have a couple of sets somewhere."

"Very well then, we'll take a single one and the first man that throws Queen is the winner."

I found the dice and the leather cup and dropped a single one into it. Poker dice, for the benefit of the uninitiate, have the Queen on one side in blue, like the Queen in a pack of cards, the King in red and the Knave in black. On two other faces, the nine and the ten.

"Who will throw first?" said Pat.

"You throw," I said.

There was a rattle, and nine fell upon the table. I nodded to Arthur, who picked up the little ivory square, waved the cup in the air, and threw—an ace.

My turn came. I threw an ace also, and Arthur and I looked at Pat with sinking hearts.

He threw a King. I don't want another five minutes like that again. We threw and threw and threw and never once did the Queen turn up. At last Arthur said:

"Look here, you fellows, I can't stand this much longer, it's playing the devil with my nerves. Let's have one more throw and if Her Majesty doesn't turn up, let's decide it by values. Ace, highest, King, Queen and so on. Tom, your turn."

I took up the box, rattled the cube within it for a long time and then dropped it flat upon the table.

I had thrown Queen.

CHAPTER TWO

About a fortnight after the memorable scene in my flat when the league came into being, I was sitting in my editorial room at the offices of the Evening Special.

I had met Juanita once at a large dinner party and exchanged half a dozen words with her—that was all. My head was full of plans, I was trying to map out a social campaign that would give me the opportunity I longed for, but as yet everything was tentative and incomplete. The exciting business of journalism, the keeping of one's thumb upon the public pulse, the directing of public thought into this or that channel, was most welcome at a time like this, and I threw myself into it with avidity.

I had just returned from lunch, and the first editions of the paper were successfully afloat, when Williams, my acting editor, and Miss Dewsbury, my private secretary, came into my room.

"Things are very quiet indeed," said Williams.

"But the circulation is all right?"

"Never better. Still, I am thinking of our reputation, Sir Thomas."

I knew what he meant. We had never allowed the Evening Special—highly successful as it was—to go on in a jog-trot fashion. We had a tremendous reputation for great "stunts," genuine, exclusive pieces of news, and now for weeks nothing particular had come our way.

"That's all very well, Williams, but we cannot make bricks without straw, and if everything is as stagnant as a duck pond, that's not our fault."

Miss Dewsbury broke in. She was a little woman of thirty with a large head, fair hair drawn tightly from a rather prominent brow, and wore tortoise-shell spectacles. She looked as if her clothes had been flung at her and had stuck, but for all that Julia Dewsbury was the best private secretary in London, true as steel, with an inordinate capacity for work and an immense love for the paper. I think she liked me a little too, and she was well worth the four hundred a year I paid her.

"I," said Miss Dewsbury, "live at Richmond."

Both Williams and I cocked our ears. Julia never wasted words, but she liked to tell her story her own way, and it was best to let her do so.

"Ah!" said Williams appreciatively.

"And I believe," she went on, "that one of the biggest newspaper stories, ever, is going to come from Richmond. It is something that will go round the world, if I am not very much mistaken, and we've got to have it first, Sir Thomas."

Williams gave a low whistle, and I strained at the leash, so to speak.

"I refer," Miss Dewsbury went on, "to the great wireless erections on Richmond Hill."

For a moment I felt disappointed. I didn't see how interest could be revived in that matter and I said so.

"Nearly a year ago," I remarked, "every paper in England was booming with it. We did our share, I'm sure. No one could have protested more vigorously, and it was the Special that got all those questions asked in Parliament. But surely, Miss Dewsbury, it's dead as mutton now. It's an accepted fact and the public have got used to it."

"There's nothing," said Williams, "more impossible than to reanimate a dead bit of news. It's been tried over and over again and it's never been a real success."

Miss Dewsbury smiled, the smile that means "When you poor dear, silly men have done talking, then you shall hear something." I saw that smile and took courage again.

"Suppose," said Miss Dewsbury, "that we just look up the facts as a preliminary to what I have to say."

She went to a side table on which was a dial with little ivory tablets, each bearing a name—Sub-editor's room, Composing room, Mr. Williams, Library, etc., and she pulled a little handle over the last disk, immediately speaking into a telephone receiver above.

"Facts relating to great wireless installment on Richmond Hill."

A bell whirred and she came back to the table where we were sitting. In twenty seconds—so perfect was our organization at the Special office—a youth entered with a portfolio containing a number of Press cuttings, photographs, etc.

Miss Dewsbury opened it.

"A year ago," she said, "the real estate market was greatly interested to learn that Flight, Jones & Rutley, the well-known agents, had secured several acres of property on the top of Richmond Hill. The buyer's name was not discovered, but an enormously wealthy syndicate was suggested. At that time, opportunely chosen, many leases had fallen in. Others that had some time still to run were bought at a greatly enhanced value, while several portions of freehold property were also purchased at ten times their worth. Houses immediately began to be demolished, immense compensation was paid to those who hung out and refused to quit the newly