“If it would not be putting you about in any way, we’d like a few moments in private with you.”

At once Mr. Tobin touched a button.  A young man presented himself, and to him the conducting of the house was transferred for the time being.  Then the two friends were led into a small sitting-room, where chairs were placed for them, and Mr. Tobin seated himself opposite them with some expectation.

“Since I became manager here,” explained he, “I seldom hear of any of the old lads.  Ye see, it’s so far from the center of the city,” regretfully, “they seldom get along this way, so they do.”

“Yes, I suppose they cling to their old haunts,” said Ashton-Kirk.  “Dan sticks to his school of boxing these days, pretty closely.  I often drop in for a round or two with him.  He’s as clever as ever, but he’s slowing up.”

Tobin shook his white head sadly.

“Tut, tut, tut,” said he.  “And do you tell me that!  Faith, he’s a young man yet—­not much over sixty—­and what call have he to be takin’ on the ways and manners of age?  Even as late as the last year of the Coffin Club he was as swift as the light.”

“He frequently spoke of that club to me,” observed the other.  “A queer place, I understand.”

Tobin nodded.

“Queer enough,” he answered, “and the members was as queer in some ways.  Nothing would do them, but they must spend their time underground, sitting at tables shaped like coffins, and drinking their liquor out of mugs shaped like skulls.  I was steward there a long time, and got good pay; but I never approved of the notion.  It always seemed like divilment to me, did that.”

“Some very well known people frequented it, did they not?”

“Many’s the time I’ve seen the governor of the state himself, sitting there with a mug in his fist.  The liquors was of the best, do you see,” with a pleased light in his eyes.  “I know that, for it were meself that selected them.  And a good sup of drink is a great attraction, so it is.”

“I don’t think that can be successfully denied,” admitted the investigator.  “Some very brilliant men have proved it to their sorrow.”

“True for ye,” said Tobin.  “Don’t I know it?  We had actors and writers and editors—­the cream of their professions—­and every one of them a devotee, so to speak, of Bacchus.  Sure, the finer the intellect, the greater the sup of drink appeals to them, if it does at all.  One of the greatest frequenters of the club was a man whose inventions,” with a grandiloquent gesture, “revolutionized the industries of the world.  And when he was mellow with it, boys o’ boys, but he could discourse!  His name was Morris,” added the speaker, “and he was the father of the young man whose name has been mixed up with this Hume affair which is so occupying the public mind just now.”

“Indeed.”

There was a pause:  Tobin’s mobile face looked back upon the past; his eyes had an introspective light in them.