always wore clothes of some fluffy material, with a low collar and
bright red tie; had soft pink cheeks, dancing grey eyes and loosely
scattered hair, prematurely thin and unquestionably like feathers. His
hands and feet were small and nimble. When he stood in his favorite
attitude with hands plunged deep in his pockets, coat-tails slightly
spread and flapping, head on one side and hair disordered, talking in
that high, twittering, yet very agreeable voice of his, it was
impossible to avoid the conclusion that here was--well--Spinrobin, Bobby
Spinrobin, "on the job."

For he took on any "job" that promised adventure of the kind he sought,
and the queerer the better. As soon as he found that his present
occupation led to nothing, he looked about for something new--chiefly in
the newspaper advertisements. Numbers of strange people advertised in the
newspapers, he knew, just as numbers of strange people wrote letters to
them; and Spinny--so he was called by those who loved him--was a diligent
student of the columns known as "Agony" and "Help wanted." Whereupon it
came about that he was aged twenty-eight, and out of a job, when the
threads of the following occurrence wove into the pattern of his life,
and "led to something" of a kind that may well be cause for question and
amazement.

The advertisement that formed the bait read as follows:--

"WANTED, by Retired Clergyman, Secretarial Assistant with courage and
imagination. Tenor voice and some knowledge of Hebrew essential; single;
_unworldly_. Apply Philip Skale,"--and the address.

Spinrobin swallowed the bait whole. "Unworldly" put the match, and he
flamed up. He possessed, it seemed, the other necessary qualifications;
for a thin tenor voice, not unmusical, was his, and also a smattering of
Hebrew which he had picked up at Cambridge because he liked the fine,
high-sounding names of deities and angels to be found in that language.
Courage and imagination he lumped in, so to speak, with the rest, and in
the gilt-edged diary he affected he wrote: "Have taken on Skale's odd
advertisement. I like the man's name. The experience may prove an
adventure. While there's change, there's hope." For he was very fond of
turning proverbs to his own use by altering them, and the said diary was
packed with absurd misquotations of a similar kind.

II

A singular correspondence followed, in which the advertiser explained
with reserve that he wanted an assistant to aid him in cer