For one thing, he was the larger of the two men, and therefore easier to see—although that observation, mentioned to Gaston in passing, was mostly for his own amusement. The real reason for the decision was that the man’s intelligence seemed to be not half that of his friend, Baron Henry Sutton. The Honorable Mr. Richard Carstairs began his Saturday evening with a bird and a bottle partaken with three friends at his club, one of the minor clubs located at the bottom of Bond Street. From there he made a solitary progression to the theater, Covent Garden, actually, where Puck, who would otherwise not have set foot into the place, endured a second-rate farce and the offerings of three warblers, one of whom actually owned a tolerable talent for carrying a tune someplace other than in a strong wooden bucket. It was during the second intermission that the baron appeared, seemingly nonchalantly making his way across the crowded refreshment area to, entirely by accident, encounter Mr. Carstairs.
