And so it was that I found myself that foggy November evening pursuing
the Camberwell tram with my heart glowing within me, and with the eager
determination that not another day should elapse before I should find
some deed which was worthy of my lady. But who--who in all this wide
world could ever have imagined the incredible shape which that deed was
to take, or the strange steps by which I was led to the doing of it?

And, after all, this opening chapter will seem to the reader to have
nothing to do with my narrative; and yet there would have been no
narrative without it, for it is only when a man goes out into the world
with the thought that there are heroisms all round him, and with the
desire all alive in his heart to follow any which may come within sight
of him, that he breaks away as I did from the life he knows, and
ventures forth into the wonderful mystic twilight land where lie the
great adventures and the great rewards. Behold me, then, at the office
of the Daily Gazette, on the staff of which I was a most insignificant
unit, with the settled determination that very night, if possible, to
find the quest which should be worthy of my Gladys! Was it hardness,
was it selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for her own
glorification? Such thoughts may come to middle age; but never to
ardent three-and-twenty in the fever of his first love.

CHAPTER II

"Try Your Luck with Professor Challenger"

I always liked McArdle, the crabbed, old, round-backed, red-headed news
editor, and I rather hoped that he liked me. Of course, Beaumont was
the real boss; but he lived in the rarefied atmosphere of some Olympian
height from which he could distinguish nothing smaller than an
international crisis or a split in the Cabinet. Sometimes we saw him
passing in lonely majesty to his inner sanctum, with his eyes staring
vaguely and his mind hovering over the Balkans or the Persian Gulf. He
was above and beyond us. But McArdle was his first lieutenant, and it
was he that we knew. The old man nodded as I entered the room, and he
pushed his spectacles far up on his bald forehead.

"Well, Mr. Malone, from all I hear, you seem to be doing very well,"
said he in his kindly Scotch accent.

I thanked him.

"The colliery explosion was excellent. So was the Southwark fire. You
have the true descreeptive touch. What did you want to see me about?"

"To ask a favor."