"You impudent rascal--"

But Royson had fled. Out in the street, he looked up at the sky. "Is
there a new moon?" he asked himself, gravely. "Am I cracked? Why did I
pitch into that chap? If I'm not careful, I shall get myself into
trouble to-day. I wonder if Jack Seymour will lend me enough to take me
to South Africa? They say that war is brewing there. That is what I
want--gore, bomb-shells, more gore. If I stay in London--"

Then he encountered a procession coming up Northumberland Avenue.
Police, mounted and on foot, headed it. Behind marched the unemployed,
thousands of them.

"If I stay in London," he continued, quite seriously, "I shall pick out
a beefy policeman and fight him. Then I shall get locked up, and my
name will be in the papers, and my uncle will see it, and have a fit,
and die. I don't want my uncle to have a fit, and die, or I shall feel
that I am responsible for his death. So I must emigrate."

Suddenly he recalled the words and manner of the Baron von Kerber. They
came to him with the vividness of a new impression. He sought for the
card in his pocket. "Baron Franz von Kerber, 118, Queen's Gate, W.," it
read.

"Sounds like an Austrian name," he reflected. "But the girl was
English, a thoroughbred, too. What was it he said? 'Work of the right
sort, for a man with brains and pluck.' Well, I shall give this joker a
call. If he wants me to tackle anything short of crime, I'm his man.
Failing him, I shall see Jack to-morrow, when he is off duty."