"
At which Quiller remarked, "That is a devil of a compliment, because
the only men who can read their names in the Louvre to-day have been
dead fifty years."
On the night after the great fog of 1897 there were five members in
the Club, four of them busy with supper and one reading in front of
the fireplace. There is only one room to the Club, and one long
table. At the far end of the room the fire of the grill glows red,
and, when the fat falls, blazes into flame, and at the other there is
a broad bow-window of diamond panes, which looks down upon the
street. The four men at the table were strangers to each other, but
as they picked at the grilled bones, and sipped their Scotch and
soda, they conversed with such charming animation that a visitor to
the Club, which does not tolerate visitors, would have counted them
as friends of long acquaintance, certainly not as Englishmen who had
met for the first time, and without the form of an introduction. But
it is the etiquette and tradition of the Grill that whoever enters it
must speak with whomever he finds there. It is to enforce this rule
that there is but one long table, and whether there are twenty men at
it or two, the waiters, supporting the rule, will place them side by
side.
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