PROLOGUE

“GAME and rubber.” Frank Carslake, a tall, dark, well-built man, carrying the winds of open spaces on his face pushed back his chair and strolled to the window. “Jove, it’s hot in here!”

“Should be, when Andrew Roche is playing bridge.” Slender and fair-haired, with boyish, clean-shaven features. Maurice Ottly swung round from the player-piano to face the group around the green-table. “What few cheques I get in the future I shall give to my bankers. To hazard them at the green cloth where our friend reigns supreme is–no, it isn’t hazard–it’s a certainty.”

“Contributions thankfully received!” The stout, dark youth at the table swept the cards together and shuffled them. “Now I know where to come when I’m down and out. Say, Lynnex, quite a nice little place you have here. First time I’ve dared to enter the portals of Tower Square. Just the place for a rising young man about town.”

“Queer show.” Carslake turned at the window. “Built round a square court, like four houses joined round the village duck-pond! Still, it looks comfortable. Best place I’ve come across for the man who has to live in the heart of Sydney–and can afford it.”

“Quiet enough.” Roche left the table and joined Carslake at the window. “Say, Lynnex, who lives over there?”

“Where?” Murray Lynnex, the owner of the chambers, strolled to where Roche and Carslake stood. “Behind those lit windows? Oh, they’re Anton Sinclair’s rooms.”

“Anton Sinclair!” Carslake glanced furtively at his companions. “Whew! That’s broke it! Don’t think I could be comfortable so close to that brute.”

“The damned cur!” Godfrey Stephen, the fifth member of the party, went to the sideboard and poured himself a stiff drink. “Why–?”

A silence fell on the five men. Carslake left the window and threw himself in a chair. Lynnex remained at the window, furtively scanning his companions, a slight, smile curving his lips.

“I may have a reason for living here,” he said, after a considerable pause.

“A reason for living near Anton Sinclair?” Roche turned suddenly.

“Queer sort of taste! Faugh! It make me sick to even see the place where the scoundrel lives.”

“I’m not one of you.” The big man in the chair spoke abruptly. “Say Lynnex, why did you invite me here tonight? When I came I thought it was for a mild gamble–but we haven’t gambled. We’ve played some sort of bridge, carelessly. I’m out half a note. I don’t thing one of us is in or out more. What’s your game? Did you invite us here to have a look at that brute’s–”

“There was a girl, Carslake.” Lynnex spoke quietly, his kee