Then came a fox-faced young man, Phoenix Mottly, elegant arbiter of all pertaining to polo and the hunt—­slim-legged, hatchet-faced—­and more presentable in the saddle than out of it.  He was followed by Bradley Harmon, with his washed-out colouring of a consumptive Swede and his corn-coloured beard; and, looming in the rear like an amiable brontasaurus, George Fane, whose swaying neck carried his head as a camel carries his, nodding as he walks.

“Well!” said Selwyn, perplexed but cordial as he exchanged amenities with each gentleman who entered, “this is a killing combination of pleasure and mortification—­because I haven’t any more breakfast to offer you unless you’ll wait until I ring for the Sultana—­”

“Breakfast!  Oh, damn!  I’ve breakfasted on a pill and a glass of vichy for ten years,” protested Draymore, “and the others either have swallowed their cocktails, or won’t do it until luncheon.  I say, Selwyn, you must think this a devilishly unusual proceeding.”

“Pleasantly unusual, Draymore.  Is this a delegation to tend me the nomination for the down-and-out club, perhaps?”

Fane spoke up languidly:  “It rather looks as though we were the down-and-out delegation at present; doesn’t it, Orchil?”

“I don’t know,” said Orchil; “it seems a trifle more promising to me since I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Captain Selwyn face to face.  Go on, Percy; let the horrid facts be known.”

“Well—­er—­oh, hang it all!” blurted out Draymore, “we heard last night how that fellow—­how Neergard has been tampering with our farmers—­what underhand tricks he has been playing us; and I frankly admit to you that we’re a worried lot of near-sports.  That’s what this dismal matinee signifies; and we’ve come to ask you what it all really means.”

“We lost no time, you see,” added Orchil, caressing the long pomaded ends of his kinky moustache and trying to catch a glimpse of them out of his languid oriental eyes.  He had been trying to catch this glimpse for thirty years; he was a persistent man with plenty of leisure.

“We lost no time,” repeated Draymore, “because it’s a devilish unsavoury situation for us.  The Siowitha Club fully realises it, Captain Selwyn, and its members—­some of ’em—­thought that perhaps—­er—­you—­ah—­being the sort of man who can—­ah—­understand the sort of language we understand, it might not be amiss to—­to—­”

“Why did you not call on Mr. Neergard?” asked Selwyn coolly.  Yet he was taken completely by surprise, for he did not know that Neergard had gone ahead and secured options on his own responsibility—­which practically amounted to a violation of the truce between them.

Draymore hesitated, then with the brutality characteristic of the overfed:  “I don’t give a damn, Captain Selwyn, what Neergard thinks; but I do want to know what a gentleman like yourself, accidentally associated with that man, thinks of this questionable proceeding.”