'You are perfectly splendid!'
'Splendid?'
'I mean, you have such pluck.'
'Oh, well; I keep on trying. I'm twenty-three and I haven't achieved anything much yet; but I certainly don't feel like sitting back and calling myself a failure.'
Ashe made a grimace.
'All right,' he said. 'I've got it.'
'I meant you to,' said Joan placidly. 'I hope I haven't bored you with my autobiography, Mr. Marson. I'm not setting myself up as a shining example; but I do like action and hate stagnation.'
'You are absolutely wonderful!' said Ashe. 'You are a human correspondence course in efficiency, one of the ones you see advertised in the back pages of the magazines, beginning, 'Young man, are you earning enough?' with a picture showing the dead beat gazing wistfully at the boss' chair. You would galvanize a jellyfish.'
'If I have really stimulated you-----'
'I think that was another slam,' said Ashe pensively. 'Well, I deserve it. Yes, you have stimulated me. I feel like a new man. It's queer that you should have come to me right on top of everything else. I don't remember when I have felt so restless and discontented as this morning.'
'It's the Spring.'
'I suppose it is. I feel like doing something big and adventurous.'
'Well, do it then. You have a Morning Post on the table. Have you read it yet?'
'I glanced at it.'
'But you haven't read the advertisement pages? Read them. They may contain just the opening you want.'
'Well, I'll do it; but my experience of advertisement pages is that they are monopolized by philanthropists who want to lend you any sum from ten to a hundred thousand pounds on your note of hand only. However, I will scan them.'
Joan rose and held out her hand.
'Good-by, Mr. Marson. You've got your detective story to write, and I have to think out something with a duke in it by to-night; so I must be going.' She smiled. 'We have traveled a good way from the point where we started, but I may as well go back to it before I leave you. I'm sorry I laughed at you this morning.'
Ashe clasped her hand in a fervent grip.
'I'm not. Come and laugh at me whenever you feel like it. I like being laughed at. Why, when I started my morning exercises, half of London used to come and roll about the sidewalks in convulsions. I'm not an attraction any longer and it makes me feel lonesome. There are twenty-nine of those Larsen Exercises and you saw only part of the first. You have done so much for me that if I can be of any use to you, in helping you to greet the day with a smile, I shall be only too proud. Exercise Six is a sure-fire mirth-provoker; I'll start with it to-morrow morning. I can also recommend Exercise Eleven--a scream! Don't miss it.'
'Very well. Well, good-by for the present.'
'Good-by.'
She was gone; and Ashe, thrilling with new emotions, stared at the door which had closed behind her. He felt as though he had been wakened from sleep by a powerful electric shock.
Close beside the sheet of paper on which he had inscribed the now luminous and suggestive title of his new Gridley Quayle story lay the Morning Post, the advertisement columns of which he had promised her to explore. The least he could do was to begin at once.
His spirits sank as he did so. It was the same old game. A Mr. Brian MacNeill, though doing no business with minors, was willing--even anxious--to part with his vast fortune to anyone over the age of twenty-one whose means happened to be a trifle straitened. This good man required no security whatever; nor did his rivals in generosity, the Messrs. Angus Bruce, Duncan Macfarlane, Wallace Mackintosh and Donald MacNab. They, too, showed a curious distaste for dealing with minors; but anyone of maturer years could simply come round to the office and help himself.
Ashe threw the paper down wearily. He had known all along that it was no good. Romance was dead and the unexpected no longer happened. He picked up his pen and began to write 'The Adventure of the Wand of Death.'
CHAPTER II
In a bedroom on the fourth floor of the Hotel Guelph in Piccadilly, the Honorable Frederick Threepwood sat in bed, with his knees drawn up to his chin, and glared at the day with the glare of mental anguish. He had very little mind, but what he had was suffering.
He had just remembered. It is like that in this life. You wake up, feeling as fit as a fiddle; you look at the window and see the sun, and thank Heaven for a fine day; you begin to plan a perfectly corking luncheon party with some of the chappies you met last night at the National Sporting Club; and then--you remember.
'Oh, dash it!' said the Honorable Freddie. And after a moment's pause: 'And I was feeling so dashed happy!'
For the space of some minutes he remained plunged in sad meditation; then, picking up the telephone from the table at his side, he asked for a number.
'Hello!'
'Hello!' responded a rich voice at the other end of the wire.
'Oh, I say! Is that you, Dickie?'
