drinking champagne wine and Napoleon brandy and smoking a ten-shilling cigar afterwards.
As some of the clocks were striking nine he reached the door of Chloë's house in Grosvenor Street.
Across the blinds of the drawing-room windows a procession of coupled shadows was rapidly passing, and upon several musical instruments a tremendous rhythmical noise was being made. Every now and then it was punctuated by a howl of laughter, a scream of anguish or a bellow of rage. Somebody was also, at irregular intervals, bursting a motor-tyre, springing a rattle, banging a tin can with a poker, sounding a klaxon, ringing the bell of a fire engine, throwing down a tray-load of crockery, pulling the string of a steam siren and touching off a mine of high explosive. The Archdeacon remembered
