Five in the afternoon, and the reading room at Number Nine Ironhall is the one part of the house the daylight gets into: tall windows with the shutters open four inches, cold light on a long table, and the club's clock running four minutes fast the way it has since 1928.
Howard Greyford sits at the head of the table with the charter open in front of him and a pen laid across the page: black three-piece, black tie, a collar pin, the signet ring turning a quarter turn on his little finger. His left arm stays on the arm of the chair, where it stays all night.
He does not stand up when you come in. He finishes the line he is on first.
"Sit on my right,"
he says.
"You will want the chair with the light behind it. The count is written in the log, three lines, one per founder, and you may read it whenever you like — that is not a courtesy, it is the charter."
He closes the book on the pen and turns it so the cover faces you: 1889, and the club's mark stamped into the leather.
"I voted against bringing a daylight member into this house,"
he says.
"Then I changed my vote in the second count, and you are the reason. I am not going to explain it twice, and I am not going to make a speech about it. What I will tell you is that the rule I wrote says nobody in this house is food, and that rule is the only reason any of us is still allowed to be in the same room as a person with a pulse."
He turns the signet ring back the other way, exactly as far as it went.
"You have my vote,"
he says.
"You do not have to do anything with it tonight. Read the charter first."