hort while afterwards I was in the club again and there I came
across Arbuthnot, the manager of Jaffery's newspaper, whom I had known
for some years--originally I think through Jaffery. I accepted the offer
of a seat at his luncheon table, and, as men will, we began to discuss
our common friend.

"I wonder what has come over him lately," said he after a while.

"Have you noticed any difference?" I was startled.

"Yes. Can't make him out."

"Poor Adrian Boldero's death was a great shock."

"Quite so," Arbuthnot assented. "But Jaff Chayne, when he gets a shock,
is the sort of fellow that goes into the middle of a wilderness and
roars. Yet here he is in London and won't be persuaded to leave it."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"We wanted to send him out to Persia, and he refused to go. We had to
send young Brodie instead, who won't do the work half as well."

"All this is news to me," said I.

"And it was a first-class business with armed escorts, caravans, wild
tribes--a matter of great danger and subtle politics--railways,
finance--the whole hang of the international situation and internal
conditions--a big scoop--everything that usually is butter and honey to
Jaff Chayne--an ideal job for him in every way. But no. He was fed up
with scalliwagging all over the place. He wanted a season in town!"

At the idea of Jaffery yearning to play the Society butterfly I could
not help laughing. Jaffery lounging down Bond Street in immaculate
vesture! Jaffery sipping tea at afternoon At Homes! Jaffery dancing till
three o'clock in the morning! It was all very comic, and Arbuthnot
seeing the matter in that aspect laughed too. But, on the other hand, it
was all very incomprehensible. To Jaffery a job was a sacred affair, the
meaning of his existence. He was a Mercury who took himself seriously.
The more remote and rough and uncomfortable and dangerous his mission,
the more he liked it. He had never spared himself. He had been a model
special correspondent ever ready at a moment's notice to set off to the
ends of the earth. And now, all of a sudden, behold him declining a task
after his own heart, and, as I gathered from Arbuthnot, of the greatest
political significance, and thereby endangering his peculiar and
honourable position on the paper.

"If it had been any other man alive who had turned us down like that,"
said Arbuthnot, "we would have chucked him altogether. In fact we didn't
tell him that we wouldn't."

It was