The Rat Trap

In the marble hall of the gay Hôtel Continental, Ostend, that reckless center of bathing, gambling and dancing, stood two Englishmen, chatting together.

The younger of the pair, about twenty-two, and dressed in tennis flannels, was a young sprig of the Stock Exchange named Claude Peyton; the elder, a handsome, dark man, about ten years his senior, was Frank Aylmer.

Aylmer was of somewhat foreign appearance, owing to the fact of his mixed parentage, his father having been an Englishman, his mother a Spaniard. He had lived in Spain for the first twelve years of his life, and was a thoroughgoing cosmopolitan.

After coming down from Oxford, he studied for the Bar, and, in due course, was called. But his father having died about that period, he came into possession of a comfortable fortune which rendered it unnecessary to work for a living. His beautiful Spanish mother had died before he and his father had come to England.

Passionately fond of travel, he made up his mind to lead a busy, cosmopolitan life at the various Continental resorts, as the seasons came and went. Though outwardly gay and irresponsible, at heart he was a quiet, rather studious man, with drowsy, half-closed eyes, and sleek black hair. Women were greatly attracted to him by his smartness, his handsome features, the perfect little dinners he frequently gave, and perhaps by his innate politeness, and his foreign manner of kissing a woman’s hand.