detail. Looks to me like the type on
a 'Thor' machine. Try the Thor Co. first. If not there, go to every
typewriter firm in Paris until it matches.... Go to the offices of the
Compagnie Transatlantique and get a list of sailings on the
Cherbourg-Quebec route. Give no name.... Meanwhile, 'phone your
journalist friend and have him call on me."

"What reason shall I give him, sir?"

"Anything that will pull him here. Tell him I'm willing to be
interviewed on the proposed international agreement about maritime
contraband in time of war. Quite sure you remember all my orders?"

"I think so, sir."

"Repeat them."

The young man did so.

"Good!"

Dean flushed with pleasure at the commendation.

"Had lunch yet?"

"Not yet."

Lars Larssen smiled as he said: "Well, postpone lunch till to-night, or
eat while you're hustling around in cabs. This is a hurry case. Here's
an advance fifty pounds to keep you in expense money."

As the crisp notes were put into his hand, Arthur Dean felt that he was
indeed on the ladder which led to business status and wealth. His
thoughts went out to a little girl in Streatham who was waiting, he
knew, till he could ask her to be his wife. If Daisy could see how he
was being taken into his employer's confidence!

Lars Larssen startled him with a remark that savoured of
thought-reading. "My three-hundred-a-year men," he said, "don't write
home about business matters."

"I quite understand, sir."

Later in the afternoon, Jimmy Martin of the _Europe Chronicle_ sent in
his card at the Grand Hotel, and Lars Larssen did not keep him waiting
beyond a few moments.

The tubby little journalist was no hero-worshipper. Few journalists can
be--they see too intimately the strings which work the affairs of the
world for the edification of a trustful public. Consequently, Martin's
attitude in the presence of the millionaire shipowner was as free from
constraint or subservience as it would be in the dressing-room of La
Belle Ariola, who danced the bolero at a _cafe chantant_, or in the ward
of the Malesherbes Hopital, interviewing an _apache_ with a cracked
skull.

Lars Larssen summed him up with lightning rapidity of thought, and
adjusted his own attitude to a friendly, confidential basis.

Said Martin: "You want to talk about contraband of war? I'd better tell
you the _Chronicle_'s red-hot against the olive-branch merchants, so I
hope you're not one of them. Say you agree with us, and I can s