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"
I tried to seem disinterested. With a transparent hypocrisy I said, "And
you want my help, my professional services maybe, to find that person."
He smiled, and looked at me over his cigarette, and I laughed at his quiet
exposure of my modest pretence.
"What a career such a man might have!" he said. "It fills me with envy to
think how I have accumulated that another man may spend----
"But there are conditions, of course, burdens to be imposed. He must, for
instance, take my name. You cannot expect everything without some return.
And I must go into all the circumstances of his life before I can accept
him. He _must_ be sound. I must know his heredity, how his parents
and grandparents died, have the strictest inquiries made into his private
morals."
This modified my secret congratulations a little.
"And do I understand," said I, "that I----"
"Yes," he said, almost fiercely. "You. _You_."
I answered never a word. My imagination was dancing wildly, my innate
scepticism was useless to modify its transports.


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