t. What's come over you, anyway?"

Mr. Burton shook his head dubiously.

"I am afraid that it is no use asking me," he replied, "for I really
don't quite know myself."

Mr. Lynn still lingered. The longer he looked at his companion, the
more he appreciated the subtle change of demeanor and language which had
certainly transformed Mr. Alfred Burton.

"It was after you came out of that little room," he continued,
meditatively, "where that Oriental fellow had been shut up. The more I
think of it, the odder it seems. You were as perky as mustard when you
went in and you've been sort of dazed ever Since you came out."

Mr. Burton lifted his hat.

"Good day, sir!" he said. "I trust that you will find a residence to
suit you."

Mr. Lynn strolled off with a puzzled frown upon his forehead, and
Alfred Burton, with a slight gesture of aversion, pushed open the
swinging doors which led into the offices of Messrs. Waddington &
Forbes.

CHAPTER II

A TRANSFORMATION

Burton stood for a moment upon the threshold of the office, looking
around him. A new and peculiar distaste for these familiar surroundings
seemed suddenly to have sprung into life. For the first time he
realized the intense ugliness of this scene of his daily labors. The
long desk, ink-splashed and decrepit, was covered with untidy piles of
papers, some of them thick with dust; the walls were hung with
seedy-looking files and an array of tattered bills; there were cobwebs
in every corner, gaps in the linoleum floor-covering. In front of the
office-boy--a youth about fourteen years of age, who represented the
remaining clerical staff of the establishment--were pinned up several
illustrations cut out from _Comic Cuts_, the _Police News_, and various
other publications of a similar order. As Burton looked around him, his
distaste grew. It seemed impossible that he had ever existed for an
hour amid such an environment. The prospect of the future was suddenly
hugely distasteful.

Very slowly he changed his coat and climbed on to his worn horsehair
stool, without exchanging his usual facetious badinage with the
remaining member of the staff. The office-boy, who had thought of
something good to say, rather resented his silence. It forced him into
taking the initiative, a position which placed him from the first at a
disadvantage.

"Any luck with the Yank, Mr. Burton?" he inquired, with anxious
civility.

Burton shook his head.

"None at all," he confes