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.