Page:Rudyard Kipling - A diversity of creatures.djvu/296

284 like a frame-food and soap advertisement. I imagine he was in your Supreme Court before he came into his lordship.'

'He is a lawyer—what we call a Law Lord—a Judge of Appeal—not a real hereditary lord.'

'That's as much beyond me as this!' Zigler slapped a fat Debrett on the table. 'But I presoom this unreal Law Lord Lundie is kind o' real in his decisions? I judged so. And—one more question. 'Ever meet a man called Walen?'

'D'you mean Burton-Walen, the editor of,' I mentioned the journal.

'That's him. 'Looks like a tough, talks like a Maxim, and trains with kings.'

'He does,' I said. 'Burton-Walen knows all the crowned heads of Europe intimately. It's his hobby.'

'Well, there's the whole outfit for you—exceptin' my Lord Marshalton, né Mankeltow, an' me. All active murderers—specially the Law Lord—or accessories after the fact. And what do they hand you out for that, in this country?'

'Twenty years, I believe,' was my reply.

He reflected a moment.

'No-o-o,' he said, and followed it with a smoke-ring. 'Twenty months at the Cape is my limit. Say, murder ain't the soul-shatterin' event those nature-fakers in the magazines make out. It develops naturally like any other proposition. . . . Say, 'j'ever play this golf game? It's come up in the States from Maine to California, an' we're prodoocin' all the champions in sight. Not a business man's play, but interestin'. I've