her return from her fiasco in the States. Hadn't we published,
while its freshness and flavour were unimpaired, Miss Braby's own
version of that great international episode? I felt somewhat
uneasy at this lumping of the actress and the author, and I confess
that after having enlisted Mr. Pinhorn's sympathies I
procrastinated a little. I had succeeded better than I wished, and
I had, as it happened, work nearer at hand. A few days later I
called on Lord Crouchley and carried off in triumph the most
unintelligible statement that had yet appeared of his lordship's
reasons for his change of front. I thus set in motion in the daily
papers columns of virtuous verbiage. The following week I ran down
to Brighton for a chat, as Mr. Pinhorn called it, with Mrs.
Bounder, who gave me, on the subject of her divorce, many curious
particulars that had not been articulated in court. If ever an
article flowed from the primal fount it was that article on Mrs.
Bounder. By this time, however, I became aware that Neil Paraday's
new book was on the point of appearing and that its approach had
been the ground of my original appeal to Mr. Pinhorn, who was now
annoyed with me for having lost so many days. He bundled me off--
we would at least not lose another. I've always thought his sudden
alertness a remarkable example of the journalistic instinct.
Nothing had occurred, since I first spoke to him, to create a
visible urgency, and no enlightenment could possibly have reached
him. It was a pure case of profession flair--he had smelt the
coming glory as an animal smells its distant prey.



CHAPTER II.