Jewdwine and Mackinnon, both secure of a position and a salary, looked solemn and a little anxious; but the men of The Planet, having formed themselves into a sort of unlimited liability company, and started a brand new “weekly” of their own (upon no sort of security beyond their bare brains) were as persons without a single care, worry or responsibility.  They were exchanging ideas in an off-hand and light-hearted manner, the only stipulation being that the ideas must be new; for, by some unwritten law of the club, the conversational currency was liable at any moment to be called in.

This evening, however, they had hit on a topic almost virgin from the mint.

“S.K.R.? Who is he? What is he?” said Mackinnon.

“I can’t tell you what he is; but I can pretty soon tell you what he’s not,” said Stables.  He was a very young man with a white face and red eyelids, who looked as if he sat up all night and went to bed in the day-time, as indeed he generally did.

“Omnis negatio est determinatio,” murmured Jewdwine, without looking up from the letter he was trying to write.

“What has he done?” persisted Mackinnon.

“He’s done a great many remarkable things,” said Rankin; “things almost as remarkable as himself.”

“Who unearthed him?”

“I did,” said Rankin, so complacently that the deep lines relaxed round the five copper-coloured bosses that were his chin and cheeks and brow. (The rest of Rankin’s face was spectacles and moustache.)

“Oh, did you?” said Maddox.  Maddox was a short man with large shoulders; heavy browed, heavy jowled, heavy moustached.  Maddox’s appearance belied him; he looked British when he was half Celt; he struck you as overbearing when he was only top-heavy; he spoke as if he was angry when he was only in fun, as you could see by his eyes.  Little babyish blue eyes they were with curly corners, a gay light in the sombre truculence of his face.  They looked cautiously round.

“I can tell you a little tale about S.K.R.  You know the last time Smythe was ill—?”

“You mean drunk.”

“Well—­temporarily extinguished.  S.K.R., who knows his music-halls, was offered Smythe’s berth.  We delicately intimated to him that if he liked at any time to devote a little paragraph to Miss Poppy Grace, he was at perfect liberty to do so.”

“A liberty he interpreted as poetic licence.”

“Nothing of the sort.  He absolutely declined the job.”

“Why?”

“Well—­the marvellous boy informed me that he was too intimate with the lady to write about her.  At any rate with that noble impartiality which distinguishes the utterances of The Planet.”

“Steady, man.  He never told ye that!” said Mackinnon.

“I didn’t say he told me, I said he informed me.”

“And whar’s the differ’nce?  I don’t see it at all.”