At one point, however, I scored a hit. After I had been put through my
paces, a process which seemed to me to end only at the exact point where
my questioner could no longer remember the name of anything in the
universe about which he could frame an interrogation, it was my turn to
ask questions.

Was the person I was addressing the gentleman who needed the companion?

No, he was merely his agent. As a matter of fact the person on whose
behalf he was acting was an American.

I nodded in a non-committal way.

He was also a millionaire.

I bowed the kind of bow that a Frenchman makes when he says Mais
parfaitement.

Furthermore he was totally blind.

"Joseph Pulitzer," I said.

"How in the world did you guess that?" asked my companion.

"That wasn't a guess," I replied. "You advertised for an intelligent
man; and this is simply where my intelligence commences to show itself.
An intelligent man couldn't live as long as I have in the United States
without hearing a good deal about Joseph Pulitzer; and, after all, the
country isn't absolutely overrun with blind millionaires."