"I think," interposed Moon, with a sardonic mildness,
"that your games are already sufficiently interesting.
Are you, may I ask, a professional acrobat on a tour,
or a travelling advertisement of Sunny Jim? How and why do you
display all this energy for clearing walls and climbing trees
in our melancholy, but at least rational, suburbs?"

The stranger, so far as so loud a person was capable of it,
appeared to grow confidential.

"Well, it's a trick of my own," he confessed candidly.
"I do it by having two legs."

Arthur Inglewood, who had sunk into the background of this scene of folly,
started and stared at the newcomer with his short-sighted eyes screwed up
and his high colour slightly heightened.

"Why, I believe you're Smith," he cried with his fresh, almost boyish voice;
and then after an instant's stare, "and yet I'm not sure."

"I have a card, I think," said the unknown, with baffling solemnity--"a card
with my real name, my titles, offices, and true purpose on this earth."

He drew out slowly from an upper waistcoat pocket a scarlet
card-case, and as slowly produced a very large card.
Even in the instant of its production, they fancied it was
of a queer shape, unlike the cards of ordinary gentlemen.
But it was there only for an instant; for as it passed from
his fingers to Arthur's, one or another slipped his hold.