Ambrose Lavendale, Diplomat

The usual little throng of Americans, journalists, men of business and loiterers, were occupying their accustomed chairs in one corner of the long, green-carpeted room. Around the bar, would-be customers were crowded three or four deepmany of them stalwart Canadians in khaki, making the most of their three days leave, and a thin sprinkling of men about town on their way to lunch in the grill-room adjoining.

• His fingers were stained to the tip of his nails as though by chemicals or tobacco juice.
• He held the glass of vermouth which he had just succeeded in obtaining from the bar, half-way suspended to his lips.
• He was listening to the conversation around him.

On the outskirts of the group was a somewhat incongruous figure, a rather under-sized, ill-dressed, bespectacled little man, neither young nor old, colourless, with a stoop which was almost a deformity.