ing a gentleman or a millionaire like Caspian, able to live at leisure
anywhere preferred.

This blooming hotel business was started to prevent Caspian getting his
entering wedge into the crack of the family fortunes. He was all
generosity. Wanted to lend money on a mortgage, just the sort of thing a
lazy, happy-go-lucky chap like Moore would snap at. And the child
couldn't be expected to look farther ahead than her father looked.
Marcel was my next inspiration--a bait to decide Moore that I was not to
be despised as an adviser. Now, I am the power behind the throne--very
_much_ behind, it's true, not in the palace of the king at all, but
prodding at the throne with a thin stick through an all but invisible
hole in the wall. If it's visible to any one, that one is Caspian
himself, who probably realized in the hour of battle between us that I'd
guessed what he was up to.

I am a type he would dislike and distrust in any case, as I think small
men are apt to dislike bigger ones capable of reducing them by superior
brute force if necessary. As it is, he hates me. I suppose he thinks I
have designs on Miss Moore myself: "the pauper adventurer who has
already taken advantage of his influence over an older woman to gain
access to the heroine." Sounds like a moving picture "cut in," doesn't
it? Not only does he (the self-cast hero of the picture) intend to
punish the villain's impudent interference with him, but to unmask the
wretch in order to thwart his designs upon the heroine. To do this, the
said hero has put a detective agency on to me.

I can hear you ask sharply, "How do you know this?"

The answer is, "I _don't_ know. I feel it." And the life I've led has
taught me to trust my feelings. I have been like a stag in the forest
who scents the unseen hunters when still very far off. If the villain,
Peter Storm, is "unmasked"--well, so much the worse for him, but others
will fall with his fall, we know. And the danger for me (it is a danger,
I admit) only adds to the--fun.

Probably you'll mention the word "damn" or some other analogous one when
you read that. "_Fun!_" you'll sneer. But my dear fellow, it expresses
my point of view. I _am_ having fun. I'm having the time of my life.
Afterward--"let come what come may, I shall have had my day." And I'm
going to fight it out on these lines if it takes all summer--unless
Caspian undermines me and blows up my trenches.

The latter, by the way, are of a homely character. I