So I hurried out of the place.  I wanted to be out of this medium in which my ineffectiveness threatened to proclaim itself to me.  It was not a very difficult matter.  I had, in those days, rooms in one of the political journalists’ clubs—­a vast mausoleum of white tiles.  But a man used to pack my portmanteau very efficiently and at short notice.  At the station one of those coincidences that are not coincidences made me run against the great Callan.  He was rather unhappy—­found it impossible to make an already distracted porter listen to the end of one of his sentences with two-second waits between each word.  For that reason he brightened to see me—­was delighted to find a through-journey companion who would take him on terms of greatness.  In the railway carriage, divested of troublesome bags that imparted anxiety to his small face and a stagger to his walk, he swelled to his normal dimensions.

“So you’re—­going to—­Paris,” he meditated, “for the Hour.”

“I’m going to Paris for the Hour,” I agreed.

“Ah!” he went on, “you’re going to interview the Elective Grand Duke....”

“We call him the Duc de Mersch,” I interrupted, flippantly.  It was a matter of nuances.  The Elective Grand Duke was a philanthropist and a State Founder, the Duc de Mersch was the hero as financier.

“Of Holstein-Launewitz,” Callan ignored.  The titles slipped over his tongue like the last drops of some inestimable oily vintage.

“I might have saved you the trouble.  I’m going to see him myself.”

“You,” I italicised.  It struck me as phenomenal and rather absurd that everybody that I came across should, in some way or other, be mixed up with this portentous philanthropist.  It was as if a fisherman were drawing in a ground line baited with hundreds of hooks.  He had a little offended air.

“He, or, I should say, a number of people interested in a philanthropic society, have asked me to go to Greenland.”

“Do they want to get rid of you?” I asked, flippantly.  I was made to know my place.

“My dear fellow,” Callan said, in his most deliberate, most Olympian tone.  “I believe you’re entirely mistaken, I believe ...  I’ve been informed that the Systeme Groenlandais is one of the healthiest places in the Polar regions.  There are interested persons who....”

“So I’ve heard,” I interrupted, “but I can assure you I’ve heard nothing but good of the Systeme and the ... and its philanthropists.  I meant nothing against them.  I was only astonished that you should go to such a place.”

“I have been asked to go upon a mission,” he explained, seriously, “to ascertain what the truth about the Systeme really is.  It is a new country with, I am assured, a great future in store.  A great deal of English money has been invested in its securities, and naturally great interest is taken in its affairs.”

“So it seems,” I said, “I seem to run upon it at every hour of the day and night.”