regards professions, I was just explaining to Mr. Crawshay that you were
almost at the top of the tree in yours."

"If you have discovered my profession," Jocelyn Thew replied, "you have
succeeded where my dearest friends have failed. Pray do not make a secret
of it, Mr. Brightman."

"I have heard you called an adventurer," was the prompt reply.

"It is a term with which I will not quarrel," Jocelyn declared. "I
certainly am one of those who appreciate adventures, who have no pleasure
in sitting down in these grey-walled, fog-hung cities, and crawling about
with one's nose on the pavements like a dog following an unclean smell. No,
that has not been my life. I have sought fortune in most quarters of the
globe, sometimes found it and sometimes lost it, sometimes with one weapon
in my hand and sometimes with another. So perhaps you are right, Mr.
Brightman, when you call me an adventurer."

"These very uncomfortable times," Crawshay remarked, "rather limit the
sphere in which one may look for stirring events."

"You are wrong, believe me," Jocelyn Thew replied earnestly. "The stories
of the Arabian Nights would seem tame, if one had the power of seeing what
goes on around us in the most unsuspected places. But we are digressing.
Mr. Brightman and I were speaking together. It occurred to me, from what he
said, that he has not quite the right idea as to my aspirations, as to the
place I desire to fill in life. I shall try to give him an opportunity to
form a saner judgment."

"It will give me the utmost pleasure to accept it," the detective