for the Honorable Freddie was simply a sort of desert, punctuated
with monthly oases in the shape of new Quayle adventures. It was
his ambition to meet the man who wrote them.

Lord Emsworth sat and smoked, and sipped and smoked again, at
peace with all the world. His mind was as nearly a blank as it is
possible for the human mind to be. The hand that had not the task
of holding the cigar was at rest in his trousers pocket. The
fingers of it fumbled idly with a small, hard object.

Gradually it filtered into his lordship's mind that this small,
hard object was not familiar. It was something new--something
that was neither his keys nor his pencil; nor was it his small
change. He yielded to a growing curiosity and drew it out. He
examined it. It was a little something, rather like a fossilized
beetle. It touched no chord in him. He looked at it with amiable
distaste.

"Now how in the world did that get there?" he said.

The Honorable Freddie paid no attention to the remark. He was now
at the very crest of his story, when every line intensified the
thrill. Incident was succeeding incident. The Secret Six were
here, there and everywhere, like so many malignant June bugs.

Annabel, the heroine, was having a perfectly rotten
time--kidnapped, and imprisoned every few minutes. Gridley
Quayle, hot on the scent, was covering somebody or other with his
revolver almost continuously. Freddie Threepwood had no time for
chatting with his father. Not so Rupert Baxter. Chatting with