you’re the man with the news.”

Jimmy fumbled with his latch-key.

“You’re a bright sort of burglar,” said Mifflin disparagingly. “Why don’t you use your oxyacetylene blow-pipe? Do you realise, my boy, that you’ve let yourself in for buying a dinner for twelve hungry men next week? In the cold light of the morning, when Reason returns to her throne, that’ll come home to you.”

“I haven’t done anything of the sort,” said Jimmy, unlocking the door.

“Don’t tell me you really mean to try it.”

“What else did you think I was going to do?”

“But you can’t. You would get caught for a certainty. And what are you going to do then? Say it was all a joke? Suppose they fill you full of bullet-holes? Nice sort of fool you’ll look appealing to some outraged householder’s sense of humour, while he pumps you full of lead with a Colt!”

“These are the risks of the profession. You ought to know that, Arthur. Think what you went through to-night.”

Arthur Mifflin looked at his friend with some uneasiness. He knew how entirely reckless he could be when he had set his mind on accomplishing anything. Jimmy, under the stimulus of a challenge, ceased to be a reasonable being, amenable to argument. And in the present case he knew that Willett’s words had driven the challenge home. Jimmy was not the man to sit still under the charge of being a “fakir,” no matter whether his accuser had been sober or drunk.

Jimmy, meanwhile, had produced whisky and cigars, and was lying on his back on the lounge, blowing smoke rings at the ceiling.

“Well?” said Arthur Mifflin at length.

“Well? What?”

“What I meant was, is this silence to be permanent, or are you going to begin shortly to amuse, elevate, and instruct? Something’s happened to you, Jimmy. There was a time when you were a bright little chap, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. Where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table in a roar when you were paying for the dinner? You remind me more of a deaf-mute celebrating the Fourth of July with noiseless powder than anything else on earth. Wake up, or I shall go. Jimmy, we were boys together. Tell me about this girl—the girl you loved and were idiot enough to lose.”

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