Here's Ledsam. Very likely
he knows more about it."
"Ledsam," some one demanded, as Francis joined the group, "are
you going to Sir Timothy Brast's show to-morrow night?"
"I hope so," Francis replied, producing his strip of pasteboard.
"Ever been before?"
"Never."
"Do you know what sort of a show it's going to be?" the actor
enquired.
"Not the slightest idea. I don't think any one does. That's
rather a feature of the affair, isn't it?"
"It is the envious outsider who has never received an invitation,
like myself," some one remarked, "who probably spreads these
rumours, for one always hears it hinted that some disgraceful and
illegal exhibition is on tap there--a new sort of drugging party,
or some novel form of debauchery."
"I don't think," Francis said quietly, "that Sir Timothy is quite
that sort of man."
"Dash it all, what sort of man is he?" the actor demanded. "They
tell me that financially he is utterly unscrupulous, although he
is rolling in money. He has the most Mephistophelian expression
of any man I ever met--looks as though he'd set his heel on any
one's neck for the sport of it--and yet they say he has given at
least fifty thousand pounds to the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals, and that the whole of the park round that
estate of his down the river is full of lamed and decrepit beasts
which he has bought himself off the streets.
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