Besides being Ringmaster-in-Chief of the Daily Circus and of a good many other journals, Lord Glenfield is a very good friend of mine; but he had never rung me up at my Club before. He was speaking from his house in Portman Square, and he wanted to know whether I was leaving the Club immediately, and if not whether he might come round. I was a little surprised, but told him to come by all means; and he said he would be along in twenty minutes.

Now Glenfield is a very much feared man, and with reason; but I speak of him as I have always found him. Before I knew him better I had the vanity to think that he had offered me my comfortably-paid job for the sake (such as it was) of my literary name; but I was soon undeceived. It appeared he was so good as to like me. Certainly he has always shown me the greatest consideration, and I am going to ask you to notice how he added to it that night.

His car glided up to the club door in exactly the twenty minutes he had mentioned, and we sought a padded alcove at the head of the stairs. He is a big and handsome man, hardly yet gray, and had I needed a leg-up in my own Club it was certainly a distinction to be seen with him. I drew a heavy curtain for the sake of privacy, and then asked him to have coffee and a liqueur.

"I will. In fact, that's why I rang you up instead of sending for you," he said with a certain pleasant grimness. "Understand?"

"Not quite."

"Well, if you're to be had up on the carpet I prefer that it should be your own carpet."

I saw, and I hope you too see the kindliness and delicacy of his action. Apparently I was in for a wigging, which was to be, not less, but still more of a wigging that I, his subordinate, was permitted to act as his host. As he said, he could have summoned me to his office or house, dressed me down, and dismissed me again; but Glenfield knows men and how to bind them to him by accepting things at their hands. It is so easy for Glenfield to give.

"Well, can you guess?" he said, nodding to me over his liqueur.

"Perhaps I can," I answered.

"Then what about it? Are you getting tired of the job?"

"Not," I answered slowly, "of the job. But I'm tired—very tired."

He diagnosed me with a swift look.

"South of France any good to you? Or Norway? Or anywhere else? I suppose young what's-his-name—Willett—could carry on?"

"Oh, of course he's been running the whole show for weeks," I admitted. Then, "Look here, Glenfield; I'd better resign."

"Don't be an ass," he replied promptly. "If I'd meant you to resign do you suppose I should have come here to-night? I sack men in my office, not while I'm drinking their liqueurs. Now tell me what's wrong. You haven't been yourself for some time."

I frowned, hardly knowing what to reply.

"This is most awfully good of you, but I hardly think it's a case for a holiday," I said at last with some embarrassment.

"Well, tell me about it. Is it working double tides, or just post-war slump? We've all got that more or less."

I mused and shook my head. "I wish you'd let me resign," I said again.

He has an imperious eye, and I did not attempt to meet it. "Why?" he demanded....

I did not answer. Willett had loyally covered my too frequent absence and neglect, but I knew and Glenfield knew that I had let my paper down. The Circus was slipping backward. Possibly there was something in Glenfield's suggestion about post-war slump. Now, when all the world should have been working as it had never worked before, so little work seemed worth the doing. The Circus, which after all is a vastly important instrument of democratic government, seemed to me a thing of stunts and japes and cynical mockery of the recent stupendous years; my own work, once so much to me that I had sacrificed to it the joy and ease of half a life, seemed a thing that the world could do perfectly well without. I missed my timber and gun-cotton and cordage and corrugated iron. My real books were my stores-ledgers "A" and "B," the Regulations for Engineer Services my only Muse. I feared—nay, I almost hoped—that I should write no more novels. My bolt seemed shot. It is a depressing thing to have been a younger novelist and to have wasted your life.

But I could not honestly take the way out that Glenfield suggested. Over and above the burden that I shared with everybody else, I had let my private affairs come between me and the work Glenfield paid me to do. The infernal Case had cramped itself on my shoulders and was making a slacker and a fraud of me. I wished that Glenfield had taken any way but this kindly one. There was only one answer to make to him.

"Well?" he said at last.

"Oh—let me send in my resignation," I growled. "I've let you down and will take the consequences."

"Consequences my eye," he replied bluntly. "The drop's nothing—a thousand or two—we can pick that up in no time. It's you I'm worrying about, not the paper. You've something on your mind. What is it? I've a bit of a pull here and there, you know, and I may be able to help."

To hear Lord Glenfield describe his appalling power as "a bit of a pull here and there" was almost comic; nobody living knows where his power ends. I consider it the most singular phenomenon of a democratic age that it gives to a few men such power as no ancient emperor ever dreamed of. Indeed, if one's conception of democracy is that it is the age's ailment, it seems to carry within itself hope of its own cure. Few men have been so bitterly attacked as Glenfield, but in my opinion he is the natural corrective to our new disease of numbers, our malady of stultifying votes.

"Of course, I'm assuming it's a purely private affair," he went on.

"Oh, it's public enough—or looks like being—that's part of the trouble——"

"Yes?" he said invitingly....