At the name of that extremely exclusive club Toodles looked scared, and stopped short.
"Nonsense," he protested, but in an awe-struck tone.

"What do you mean?
A member ?" "Honorary," muttered the Assistant Commissioner through his teeth.
"Heavens!" Toodles looked so thunderstruck that the Assistant Commissioner smiled faintly.
"That's between ourselves strictly," he said.
"That's the beastliest thing I've ever heard in my life," declared Toodles feebly, as if astonishment had robbed him of all his buoyant strength in a second.
The Assistant Commissioner gave him an unsmiling glance.

Till they came to the door of the great man's room, Toodles preserved a scandalised and solemn silence, as though he were offended with the Assistant Commissioner for exposing such an unsavoury and disturbing fact.

It revolutionised his idea of the Explorers' Club's extreme selectness, of its social purity.

Toodles was revolutionary only in politics; his social beliefs and personal feelings he wished to preserve unchanged through all the years allotted to him on this earth which, upon the whole, he believed to be a nice place to live on.
He stood aside.
"Go in without knocking," he said.
Shades of green silk fitted low over all the lights imparted to the room something of a forest's deep gloom.