The House of Evil

“Hugh, old man, you’re growing as close as an oyster. This is twice this week you have dined out, leaving me solitary, and refused to tell me what you are up to. I wonder what it is you have got up your sleeve?”

Two young men were strolling down the lovely Promenade des Anglais at Nice. The elder, the Honourable Hugh Craig, was twenty-seven; Leonard Lydon, his companion, about six months younger.

They had been fast friends at Harrow, where Craig had risen to be the Head of the School, and afterwards at Balliol, and the friendship had continued after they left Oxford till the present time.

Craig, the youngest son of Viscount Clandon, was a member of an old aristocratic family which, for generations, had been closely connected with the government of the country. Several of the heads of it had sat in the Cabinets of their day and generation; other members had filled high civil and military posts in England and its Dependencies. Hugh himself was in the diplomatic service, and was enjoying a brief holiday with his friend on the lovely Côte d’Azur.

Leonard Lydon was of humbler stock than his aristocratic companion. His father, a wealthy Liverpool merchant, had risen from small beginnings. He had laid the foundations of his fortune very early in his career, so that he was able to give his numerous family the advantage of a liberal education. Each of his five sons was sent to a public school, and subsequently either to Cambridge or Oxford.