IT was a few minutes after one o'clock - the busiest hour of the day at the most popular bar in London. 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...

Edward Phillips Oppenheim (22 October 1866 - 3 February 1946) was an English novelist, in his lifetime a major and successful writer of genre fiction including thrillers.