The lucky advent of the Archangel Gabriel, with a grin on his face and a doll in his mouth—­the Archangel Gabriel, commonly known as Gabs, and so termed on account of his archi-angelic disposition, a hideous mongrel with a white patch over one eye and a brown patch over the other, with the nose of a collie and the legs of a Great Dane and the tail of a fox-terrier, whose mongreldom, however, Adrian repudiated by the bold assertion that he was a Zanzibar bloodhound—­the lucky advent of this pampered and over-affectionate quadruped directed Susan’s mind from the somewhat difficult conversation.  She ran off, forthwith, to the rescue or her doll; but later (I heard) her nurse was sore put to it to explain the mystery of the golden pen.

“So much for Adrian.  I’m tired of the auriferous person,” said I, waving a hand.  “What about yourself?  What about the dynamic widow?”

“Oh, damn the dynamic widow,” he replied, corrugating his serene and sunburnt forehead.  “I’ve come down here to forget her.  I’ll tell you about her later.”  Then he grinned, in his silly, familiar way, showing two rows of astonishingly white, strong teeth, between the hair on lip and chin.

“Well,” said I, “at any rate give some account of yourself.  What were you doing in Albania, for instance?”

“Prospecting,” said he.

“In what—­gold, coal, iron?”

“War,” said he.  “There’s going to be a hell of a bust-up one of these days—­and one of these days very soon—­in the Balkans.  From Scutari to Salonica to Rodosto, the whole blooming triangle—­it’s going to be a battlefield.  The war correspondent who goes out there not knowing his ground will be a silly ass.  The slim statesman like me won’t.  See?  So poor old Prescott—­you must know Prescott of Reuter’s?—­anyhow that was the chap—­poor old Prescott and I went out exploring.  When he pegged out with enteric I hadn’t finished, so I dumped his widow down at Cettinje where I have some pals, and started out again on my own.  That’s all.”

He filled another pint tumbler with the iced liquid (one always had to provide largely for Jaffery’s needs) and poured it down his throat.

“I don’t call that a very picturesque account of your adventures,” said Adrian.

Jaffery grinned.  “I’ll tell you all sorts of funny things, if you’ll give me time,” said he, wiping his lips with a vast red and white handkerchief about the size of a ship’s Union Jack.

But we did not give him time; we plied him with questions and for the next hour he entertained us pleasantly with stories of his wanderings.  He had a Rabelaisian way of laughing over must of his experiences, even those which had a touch of the gruesome, and the laughter got into his speech, so that many amusing episodes were told in the roars of a hilarious lion.