easy, and required only alert intelligence. Perhaps the head doctor
in the hospital might want somebody to watch the other doctors, to
see if they were neglecting the patients, or perhaps flirting with
some of the nurses--there was sure to be something like that going
on. It had been that way in the orphans' home where Peter had spent
a part of his childhood till he ran away. It had been that way again
in the great Temple of Jimjambo, conducted by Pashtian el Kalandra,
Chief Magistrian of Eleutherinian Exoticism. Peter had worked as
scullion in the kitchen in that mystic institution, and had worked
his way upward until he possessed the confidence of Tushbar Akrogas,
major-domo and right hand man of the Prophet himself.

Wherever there was a group of people, and a treasure to be
administered, there Peter knew was backbiting and scandal and
intriguing and spying, and a chance for somebody whose brains were
"all there." It might seem strange that Peter should think about
such things, just then when the earth had opened up in front of him
and the air had turned to roaring noise and blinding white flame,
and had hurled him against the side of a building and dropped the
bleeding half of a woman's body across his chest; but Peter had
lived from earliest childhood by his wits and by nothing else, and
such a fellow has to learn to use his wits under any and all
circumstances, no matter how bewildering. Peter's training covered
almost every emergency one could think of; he had even at times
occupied himself by imagining what he would do if the Holy Rollers
should turn out to be right, and if suddenly Gabriel's trumpet were
to blow, and be were to find himself confronting Jesus in a long
white night-gown.