Chapter 19
SLEEK AND WELL-GROOMED, he stood in the centre of the room listening with an air of polite deference to the conversation which his hostess, resplendent in black velvet and diamonds, was carrying on with a lanky, elderly individual in an ill-fitting evening tail coat with a pronounced stoop and a rampant shock of grey hair. A fine figure of a man, Mr. Hilary Pedder, well-strapped into the smartly tailored dinner-jacket with a black pearl gleaming in his shirt-front, clear-eyed, sun-browned. His six feet of brawn and muscle had taken on the curves which good living brings and there were pouches under his eyes and blue veins in the massive, handsome face. But his regard had a snap to it and his features radiated a vitality which belied the evidence of his abundant, silvering hair.
