'The Table' is a mystery novel written by Edgar Wallace and Robert Curtis. The story begins with a man named Dinkie Lane, who was looking at his watch. The watch was characteristic of Dinkie Lane. It was small, jeweled, fastened to his wrist by a thin gold bracelet, and was just a little too ornate and too delicate not to look out of place on a man's wrist. In the same way, everything about Dinkie Lane just missed being right. His trousers were a shade too full and too beautifully creased. The shoulders of his coat were a trifle too square, and the waist just a little too emphasized. The diamonds in his gold ring and tie-pin were too large, and the hair in front of his ears was trained to grow just a little too far down his cheekbones. He had small, delicate hands, rather too well manicured, and there was something effeminate about his thin, sallow face beneath his black hair, which was brushed straight back from his forehead and dressed with rather too much brilliantine.