' too. I'll never say another
word against it. I'll--yes, I'll _live_ in it--if only you'll let me
up?"

"Do as he asks you," said Horace to the Jinnee, "or I swear I'll never
speak to you again."

"Thou art the arbiter of this matter," was the reply. "And if I yield,
it is at thy intercession, and not his. Rise then," he said to the
humiliated client; "depart, and show us the breadth of thy shoulders."

It was this precise moment which Beevor, who was probably unable to
restrain his curiosity any longer, chose to re-enter the room. "Oh,
Ventimore," he began, "did I leave my----?... I beg your pardon. I
thought you were alone again."

"Don't go, sir," said Mr. Wackerbath, as he scrambled awkwardly to his
feet, his usually florid face mottled in grey and lilac. "I--I should
like you to know that, after talking things quietly over with your
friend Mr. Ventimore and his partner here, I am thoroughly convinced
that my objections were quite untenable. I retract all I said.
The house is--ah--admirably planned: _most_ convenient, roomy,
and--ah--unconventional. The--the entire freedom from all sanitary
appliances is a particular recommendation. In short, I am more than
satisfied. Pray forget anything I may have said which might be taken to
imply the contrary.... Gentlemen, good afternoon!"

He bowed himself past the Jinnee in a state of deference and
apprehension, and was heard stumbling down the staircase. Horace hardly
dared to meet Beevor's eyes, which were fixed upon the green-turbaned
Jinnee, as he stood apart in dreamy abstraction, smiling placidly to
himself.

"I say," Beevor said to Horace, at last, in an undertone, "you never
told me you had gone into partnership."

"He's not a regular partner," whispered Ventimore; "he does odd things
for me occasionally, that's all."

"He soon managed to smooth your client down," remarked Beevor.

"Yes," said Horace; "he's an Oriental, you see, and, he has a--a very
persuasive manner. Would you like to be introduced?"

"If it's all the same to you," replied Beevor, still below his voice,
"I'd rather be excused. To tell you the truth, old fellow, I don't
altogether fancy the looks of him, and it's my opinion," he added, "that
the less you have to do with him the better. He strikes me as a
wrong'un, old man."

"No, no," said Horace; "eccentric, that's all--you don't understand
him."

"Receive news!" began the Jinnee, after Beevor, with suspicion and
disapproval eviden