She paused.  The recollection of the Honorable Freddie had come to her.  No; Valentine would not do!

“No; not Valentine,” she went on—­“it’s too jaunty.  I used it once years ago, but it never sounded just right.  I want something more respectable, more suited to my position.  Can’t you suggest something?”

Aline pondered.

“Simpson?”

“Simpson!  It’s exactly right.  You must practice it.  Simpson!  Say it kindly and yet distantly, as though I were a worm, but a worm for whom you felt a mild liking.  Roll it round your tongue.”

“Simpson.”

“Splendid!  Now once again—­a little more haughtily.”

“Simpson—­Simpson—­Simpson.”

Joan regarded her with affectionate approval.

“It’s wonderful!” she said.  “You might have been doing it all your life.”

“What are you laughing at?” asked Aline.

“Nothing,” said Joan.  “I was just thinking of something.  There’s a young man who lives on the floor above this, and I was lecturing him yesterday on enterprise.  I told him to go and find something exciting to do.  I wonder what he would say if he knew how thoroughly I am going to practice what I preach!”

CHAPTER IV

In the morning following Aline’s visit to Joan Valentine, Ashe sat in his room, the Morning Post on the table before him.  The heady influence of Joan had not yet ceased to work within him; and he proposed, in pursuance of his promise to her, to go carefully through the columns of advertisements, however pessimistic he might feel concerning the utility of that action.

His first glance assured him that the vast fortunes of the philanthropists, whose acquaintance he had already made in print, were not yet exhausted.  Brian MacNeill still dangled his gold before the public; so did Angus Bruce; so did Duncan Macfarlane and Wallace Mackintosh and Donald MacNab.  They still had the money and they still wanted to give it away.

Ashe was reading listlessly down the column when, from the mass of advertisements, one of an unusual sort detached itself.

Wanted:  Young Man of good appearance, who is poor and reckless, to undertake a delicate and dangerous enterprise.  Good pay for the right man.  Apply between the hours of ten and twelve at offices of Mainprice, Mainprice & Boole, 3, Denvers Street, Strand.

And as he read it, half past ten struck on the little clock on his mantelpiece.  It was probably this fact that decided Ashe.  If he had been compelled to postpone his visit to the offices of Messrs. Mainprice, Mainprice & Boole until the afternoon, it is possible that barriers of laziness might have reared themselves in the path of adventure; for Ashe, an adventurer at heart, was also uncommonly lazy.  As it was, however, he could make an immediate start.

Pausing but to put on his shoes, and having satisfied himself by a glance in the mirror that his appearance was reasonably good, he seized his hat, shot out of the narrow mouth of Arundell Street like a shell, and scrambled into a taxicab, with the feeling that—­short of murder—­they could not make it too delicate and dangerous for him.