“You’ll find a pair of military brushes and every book on football Walter Camp ever wrote. If there’s anything else you want, try and get it.”

They followed the butler out. The bell rang, and going to the door himself, Kirk admitted another couple. Mr. Carrick Enderby, who was employed in the San Francisco office of Thomas Cook and Sons, was a big, slow, blond man with a monocle and nothing much behind it. All the family brilliance seemed to be monopolized by his wife, Eileen, a dark, dashing woman of thirty-five or so, who came in breezily. She joined the women, and the three men stood in the ill-at-ease silence that marks a dinner party in its initial stages.

“We’re in for a bit of fog, I fancy,” Enderby drawled.

“No doubt of it,” Kirk answered.

When the women reappeared, Mrs. Dawson Kirk came at once to Chan’s side.

“Sally Jordan of Honolulu is an old friend of mine,” she told him. “A very good friend. We’re both living beyond our time, and there’s nothing cements friendship like that. I believe you were once - er - attached -“

Chan bowed. “One of the great honors of my poor life. I was her house-boy, and memories of her kindness will survive while life hangs out.”

“Well, she told me how you repaid that kindness recently. A thousand-fold, she put it.”

Chan shrugged. “My old employer has only one weakness. She exaggerates stupendously.”

“Oh, don’t be modest,” said Mrs. Kirk. “Gone out of fashion, long ago. These young people will accuse you of something terrible if you try that tune. However, I like you for it.”

A diversion at the door interrupted her. Colonel John Beetham entered the living-room. John Beetham the explorer, whose feet had stood in many dark and lonely places, who knew Tibet and Turkestan, Tsaidam and southern Mongolia. He had lived a year in a house-boat on the largest river in the heart of Asia, had survived two heart-breaking, death-strewn retreats across the snowy plateau of Tibet, had walked amid the ruins of ancient desert cities that had flourished long before Christ was born.

For once, here was a man who looked the part. Lean, tall, bronzed, there was a living flame in his gray eyes. But like Charlie Chan, he came of a modest race, and his manner was shy and aloof as he acknowledged the introductions.

“So glad,” he muttered. “So glad.” A mere formula.

Suddenly Sir Frederic Bruce was again in the room. He seized Colonel Beetham’s hand.

“I met you several years ago,” he said. “You wouldn’t recall it. You were the lion of the hour, and I a humble spectator. I was present at the dinner of the Royal Geographical Society in London when they gave you that enormous gold doodad - the Founders’ Medal - wasn’t that it?”

“Ah yes - of course.