’ He rang the bell, and waited for the butler.

‘Bring a couple of sandwiches and a syphon,’ he said to the man, ‘and then don’t trouble me any more tonight — or let anybody else.’

The man went. Gerald turned to Birkin with his eyes lighted.

‘And you used to wrestle with a Jap?’ he said. ‘Did you strip?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘You did! What was he like then, as a wrestler?’

‘Good, I believe. I am no judge. He was very quick and slippery and full of electric fire. It is a remarkable thing, what a curious sort of fluid force they seem to have in them, those people not like a human grip —