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 deep–many 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. 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. 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.