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A little later the Beautiful Lady departed and we were left alone.

“And now,” said Harris, “tell me about yourself. What are you doing? Why have you left Manchester?—but there is no reason to ask that. Tell me this—are you making enough money for yourself?”

“Well, I’ve lived in London just one week,” said I, “and my tastes are rather expensive. Just before I left Manchester a very experienced journalist told me I should be making a thousand pounds a year at the end of eighteen months; another, equally experienced, declared I should never make more than six pounds a week. I hope the second one won’t prove correct.”

He mused for a few moments.

“You ought to make a thousand pounds a year pretty easily, I should think,” he said at length. “Whom do you know?”

I knew nobody, and said so. He thereupon took a piece of paper from his pocket and wrote a list of names; at the top of the list stood J.L. Garvin; at the bottom, Lord Northcliffe.

“Northcliffe’s away,” he said, “buying forests in Newfoundland to make paper with. However, he’ll be back in a week or two, and in the meantime I’ll write you a letter to give to him. And now we’ll take a taxi and see people.”