So I hurried out of the place. I wanted to be out of this medium in
which my ineffectiveness threatened to proclaim itself to me. It was not
a very difficult matter. I had, in those days, rooms in one of the
political journalists' clubs--a vast mausoleum of white tiles. But a man
used to pack my portmanteau very efficiently and at short notice. At
the station one of those coincidences that are not coincidences made me
run against the great Callan. He was rather unhappy--found it impossible
to make an already distracted porter listen to the end of one of his
sentences with two-second waits between each word. For that reason he
brightened to see me--was delighted to find a through-journey companion
who would take him on terms of greatness. In the railway carriage,
divested of troublesome bags that imparted anxiety to his small face and
a stagger to his walk, he swelled to his normal dimensions.

"So you're--going to--Paris," he meditated, "for the _Hour_."

"I'm going to Paris for the _Hour_," I agreed.

"Ah!" he went on, "you're going to interview the Elective Grand
Duke...."

"We call him the Duc de Mersch," I interrupted, flippantly. It was a
matter of nuances. The Elective Grand Duke was a philanthropist and a
State Founder, the Duc de Mersch was the hero as financier.

"Of Holstein-Launewitz," Callan ignored. The titles slipped over his
tongue like the last drops of some inestimable oily vintage.

"I might have saved you the trouble. I'm going to see him myself."