His connexion with it was by no means casual and temporary. It was his father's shop. CHAPTER V The little booksellers of the Strand, in their death struggle against Rickman's, never cursed that house more heartily than did the Junior Journalists, in their friendly, shabby little den, smelling of old leather and tobacco and the town. They complained that it cut on two-thirds of the light from the front windows of the reading-room. Not that any of them were ever known to read in it. They used it chiefly as a place to talk in, for which purpose little illumination was required. To-night one of the windows in question was occupied by a small group of talkers isolated from the rest. There was Mackinnon, of _The Literary Observer_. There were the three wild young spirits of _The Planet_, Stables, who had launched it with frightful impetus into space (having borrowed a sum sufficient for the purpose), Maddox, who controlled its course, and Rankin, whose brilliance made it twinkle so brightly in the firmament. With them, but emphatically not of them, was Horace Jewdwine, of Lazarus, who had come up from Oxford to join the staff of _The Museion_. Jewdwine and Mackinnon, both secure of a position and a salary, looked solemn and a little anxious; but the men of _The Planet_, having formed themselves into a sort of unlimited liability company, and started a brand new "weekly" of their own (upon no sort of security beyond their bare brains) were as persons without a single care, worry or responsibility. They were exchanging ideas in an off-hand and light-hearted manner, the only stipulation being that the ideas must be new; for, by some unwritten law of the club, the conversational currency was liable at any moment to be called in. This evening, however, they had hit on a topic almost virgin from the mint. "S.K.R.? _Who_ is he? _What_ is he?" said Mackinnon. "I can't tell you what he _is_; but I can pretty soon tell you what he's not," said Stables. He was a very young man with a white face and red eyelids, who looked as if he sat up all night and went to bed in the day-time, as indeed he generally did. "_Omnis negatio est determinatio_," murmured Jewdwine, without looking up from the letter he was trying to write. "What has he done?" persisted Mackinnon. "He's done a great many remarkable things," said Rankin; "things almost as remarkable as himself." "Who unearthed him?" "I did," said Rankin, so complacently that the deep lines relaxed round the five copper-coloured bosses that were his chin and cheeks and brow. (The rest of Rankin's face was spectacles and moustache.)