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some of the arrears, if you don’t mind. What have you been doing? How did you get here? Begin at whichever end is easiest.”

“You’d be bored if I told you the whole history of—how long is it?—nearly eight years. I knocked about in the Mediterranean—and Egypt. Egypt wasn’t a success. A fellow called Robertson picked me up and put me on a station of his in New Zealand. He was no end good to me. I was there two years—and in Australia and America, and last a year or so in England, mainly with motors. Then I thought I’d like a look at the Continent again—due for a trip, you know—and here I am. Where have you been?”

“Oh, I always was a globe-trotter and I haven’t done much. India—shooting—and the Rockies, and so on. . . . But look here, Tony, you don’t waste much time over your autobiography. You seem to have been amazingly lucky.”

“Well, it’s been mixed. I’ve tramped towns looking for work till the soles were out of my boots and the pavements felt red hot, and———”

He stopped dead. He had been going to say “and I was sick with hunger,” but that spectre was still too vivid to be named.

“But this was sheer luck, certainly. I never thought they’d take me. It was my knowledge of French that got me the place you see, my father was some good to me for once. My boss is a man called Marchmont, he only came as far as Cannes and then had to go back to London. The wife and daughter and son are here. Son’s a fool. Nice enough people—plenty of money and heaps of social ambition. It was rather funny when the old man was engaging me. He was as suspicious as—as I used to be, and they’d advertised for a man who spoke French, so he had a linguistic friend of his there during the interview