"Find out if he is there still. Let him take you out. Don't lose sight of him--and write to me." "To-morrow night," he said, "I will renew my youth. I will search for him on the boulevards, and see the sights which make a gay dog of the travelling Briton." She nodded. "You're a good sort, Gilbert," she said simply. "Thanks!" CHAPTER XV ON THE SPREE High up on the seventh floor of one of London's newest and loftiest buildings, a young man sat writing in a somewhat barely furnished office. He wrote deliberately, and with the air of one who thoroughly enjoyed his occupation. The place had a bookish aspect--the table was strewn with magazines and books of reference; piles of literature of a varied order stood, in the absence of bookshelves, against the wall. The young man himself, however, was the most interesting object in the room. He was big and dark and rugged. There was strength in his square-set shoulders, in the compression of his lips, even in the way his finger guided the pen across the paper. He was thoroughly absorbed in his task. Nevertheless he raised his head at a somewhat unusual sound. The lift had swung up to his floor, he heard the metal gate thrown open. There was a knock at the door, and Macheson walked in. "Victor, by glory!" Down went the pen, and Richard Holderness stood up at his desk with outstretched hands. Macheson grasped them heartily and seated himself on the edge of the table. "It's good to see you, Dick," he declared, "like coming back to the primitive forces of nature, unchanged, unchanging. The sight of you's enough to stop a revolution." "You're feeling like that, are you?" his friend answered, his eyes fixed upon Macheson's face. "Yes, I see you are. Go ahead! Or will you smoke first?" Macheson produced his pipe, and his host a great tin of honeydew. Macheson helped himself slowly. He seemed to be trying to gain time. "Blessed compact, ours," the giant remarked, leaning back in his chair. "No probing for confidences, no silly questions. Out with it!" "I've started wrong," Macheson said. "I'll have to go back on my tracks a bit anyway." Holderness grunted affably. "Nothing like mistakes," he remarked. "Best discipline in the world." "I started on a theory," Macheson continued thoughtfully. "It didn't pan out. The people I have been trying to get at are better left alone." "Exactly why?" Holderness asked. "I'll tell you," Macheson answered. "You know I've seen a bit of what we call village life. Their standard isn't high enough, of course. Things come too easily, their noses are too close to the ground. They are moderately sober, moderately industrious, but the sameness of life is at work all the time. It makes machines of the factory hands, animals of the country folk. I knew that before I started. I thought I could lift their heads a little. It's too big a task for me, Dick." "Of course," Holderness assented. "You can't graft on to dead wood."