A Student of Men

Mr. Jackson Hyane was one of those oldish-looking young men to whom the
description of "man about town" most naturally applied. He was always
well-dressed and correctly dressed. You saw him at first nights. He
was to be seen in the paddock at Ascot--it was a shock to discover that
he had not the Royal Enclosure badge on the lapel of his coat--and he
was to be met with at most of the social functions, attendance at which
did not necessarily imply an intimate acquaintance with the leaders of
Society, yet left the impression that the attendant was, at any rate,
in the swim, and might very well be one of the principal swimmers.

He lived off Albemarle Street in a tiny flat, and did no work of any
kind whatever. His friends, especially his new friends, thought he
"had a little money," and knew, since he told them, that he had
expectations. He did not tell them that his expectations were largely
bound up in their credulity and faith in his integrity. Some of them
discovered that later, but the majority drifted out of his circle
poorer without being wiser, for Mr. Hyane played a wonderful game of
piquet, and seemed to be no more than abnormally lucky.

His mother had been a Miss Whitland, his father was the notorious
Colonel Hyane, who boasted that his library was papered with High Court
writs, and who had had the distinction of being escorted from Monte
Carlo by the police of the Principality.

Mr. Jackson Hyane was a student of men and affairs. Very little
escaped his keen observation, and he had a trick of pigeon-holing
possibilities of profit, and forgetting them until the moment seemed
ripe for their exploitation. He was tall and handsome, with a smile
which was worth at least five thousand pounds a year to him, for it
advertised his boyish innocence and enthusiasm--he who had never been
either a boy or enthusiastic.