himself or anybody else. Then, seeing that my interest
was genuine, he spat and scratched his head.

"We've been together twenty years," he said, in a low voice, emotion
struggling with self-consciousness, "and I've 'ad nothing agin her all
that time. She's a bloomin' wonder, I tell you straight."

I held out my hand. "At any rate, you've got what I haven't," said I. "A
woman who loves you to welcome you home."

And I went away, longing, longing for Lola's arms and the deep love in
her voice.

Now that I come to view my actions in some sort of perspective, it seems
to me that it was the underlying poignancy of this trumpery incident--a
poignancy which, nevertheless, bit deep into my soul, that finally
determined the current of my life.

A short while afterwards, Campion, who for some time past had found the
organisation of Barbara's Building had far outgrown his individual
power of control, came to me with a proposal that I should undertake the
management of the institution under his general directorship. As he knew
of my financial affairs and of my praiseworthy but futile efforts to
live on two hundred a year, he offered me another two hundred by way of
salary and quarters in the Building. I accepted, moved the salvage of my
belongings from Victoria Street to Lambeth, and settled down to the work
for which a mirth-loving Providence had destined me from my cradle.

When I told Agatha, she nearly fainted.

CHAPTER XXIII

No sooner had I moved into Barbara's Building and was preparing to begin
my salaried duties than I received news which sent me off post haste
to Berlin. And just as it was not I but Anastasius Papadopoulos who
discovered Captain Vauvenarde, so, in this case, it was Dale who
discovered Lola.

He burst in upon me one day, flourishing a large visiting-card, which he
flung down on the table before my eyes.

"Do you recognise that?"

It was the familiar professional card of the unhappy Anastasius.

"Yes."

"Do you see the last line?"

I read "London Agents: Messrs. Conto and Blag, 172 Maiden Lane, W.C." I
looked up. "Well?" I asked.

"It has done the trick," said he triumphantly. "What fools we were not
to have thought of it before. I was rooting out a drawer of papers and
came across the card. You remember he handed us one all round the
first day we met him. I put it away--I'm rather a methodical devil with
papers, as you know. When I found it, I danced a hornpipe all round the
room