Here was what is commonly called in England, a “liner,” or a free-lance, a man not attached to any newspaper but contributing whatever stories, interviews or articles that come his way. They are not so common in Fleet Street as they used to be when I first came to London. The great news agencies have killed them. The new system of journalism has passed them by. But occasionally you meet a man with that hungry, hard-up look, with a grievance against the world, and a pretty taste in whisky-and-soda, and this was such a one. Under the genial influence of a second drink he confirmed my diagnosis. He had a grievance against all the papers and admitted that he was on the black-list of three or four for sending in contributions which were not exactly true. I asked him why he had not enlisted and his lips curved in a sneer. He said he was an Irishman, and that he hated England anyway, and that he hated the army more poisonously than he hated anything else. He hated the war, he hated the Northworths and a long string of other newspaper proprietors, but most of all he hated Fleet Street, its editors, sub-editors, reporters, advertisement managers; in fact, his hatred extended to the very newsboys on the streets. This was the man for my money. I explained to him that in addition to being a Chilian importer I was running a Chinese news agency to collect and distribute news pertaining or of interest to Europeans in China, and when I told him that I was short of a reporter for news collection and offered him £6 a week, he nearly jumped into the air with delight. In engaging him I was putting into practice a plan which I had long formed. Here was an opportunity for collecting news without arousing suspicion. A newspaper reporter can ask questions which none of my agents would dare to frame. He can go up and down the country without exciting suspicion, and the mere fact that he is a reporter, is sufficient to give him an entrée into circles, admission to which we could only risk at grave danger to ourselves. An ordinary reporter might have been valueless, but a man with a grievance, a man who was “broke to the wide,” to use Mister Haynes’s own expressive idiom, was especially valuable. I took him down to the news agency office, and there he had tangible proof of the solidity and bonâ-fides of the agency. The two rooms in Fleet Street, which I had fitted up, were well furnished. The name of the agency was painted on the windows and on the glass panels of the office door, the files of the newspapers were carefully kept by the boy I employed. There were telephones and a “tape machine”--in fact, it was the most convincing environment that German forethought could design. I never saw a man so content as he was when I sat him down at a new desk within reach of the telephone, handed him a £5 note on account of expenses, and outlined the plan of inquiry. “Do you speak any foreign language?” I asked.