was fashionable just then, and was dressed in a showy check suit and a
white hat. But the thing that struck me most was his gloves. I suppose
I hadn't improved quite so much myself, for he knew me in a moment, and
held out his hand.

"What, 'Enery!" he says, "you've moved on, then!"

"Yes," I says, shaking hands with him, "and I could move on again from
this shop without feeling sad. But you've got on a bit?" I says.

"So-so," he says, "I'm a journalist."

"Oh," I says, "what sort?" for I'd seen a good many of that lot during
six months I'd spent at a house in Fleet Street, and their get-up hadn't
sumptuousness about it, so to speak. "Kipper's" rig-out must have totted
up to a tidy little sum. He had a diamond pin in his tie that must have
cost somebody fifty quid, if not him.

"Well," he answers, "I don't wind out the confidential advice to old
Beaky, and that sort of thing. I do the tips, yer know. 'Cap'n Kit,'
that's my name."

"What, the Captain Kit?" I says. O' course I'd heard of him.

"Be'old!" he says.

"Oh, it's easy enough," he goes on. "Some of 'em's bound to come out
right, and when one does, you take it from me, our paper mentions the
fact. And when it is a wrong 'un--well, a man can't always be shouting
about himself, can 'e?"