I explained that my manager, Pelham, had seen them, whereupon he breathed more freely; yet my announcement seemed to have created within him undue consternation and alarm. He pressed the tobacco very carefully and deliberately into his pipe, but made no further comment. At last, raising his head and looking straight across at me, he said: "I may as well explain, Mr. Holford, that I had an ulterior motive in asking you in this evening. The fact is, I am sorely in want of a friend--one in whom I can trust. I suppose," he added--"I suppose I ought to tell you something concerning myself. Well, I'm a man with many acquaintances, but very few friends. My profession? Well, that is surely my own affair. It often takes me far afield, and sometimes causes me to keep queer company. The fact is," he said, after a moment's hesitation, "I'm a dealer in secrets." "A dealer in secrets!" I echoed. "I don't quite follow you." "The secrets sometimes confided to my keeping would, if I betrayed them, create a worldwide sensation," he said slowly, looking straight into the fire. "At times I am in possession of ugly facts concerning my fellow-men which would eclipse any of the scandals of the past twenty years. And at this moment, as I tell you, I am in sad need of a friend." He was quick to notice the expression upon my face. "I want no financial aid," he hastened to assure me. "On the contrary, if at any time I can be of any little assistance to you, I generally have a few pounds lying idle." I thanked him, my curiosity growing greater. He was seated in a big, high-backed grandfather's chair, his head leaning against the padded side, his gaze, a trifle melancholy, fixed upon the dancing flames. At his back was an open roll-top writing-table, very tidy, with a clean blotting-pad, and everything in its place, spick and span. "To be quite frank with you, Mr. Holford," he said, "I may as well tell you that an incident has occurred which has rendered it necessary that I should come to you, a comparative stranger, for friendship and assistance. Ah," he added, with a sharp and curious glance at me, "I see that you don't trust me! You should never judge a man by his clothes." "I never do," I protested. "But you haven't explained the reason why you are so anxious for my friendship!" For a few minutes he was silent. Then, of a sudden, he turned to the big grey parrot and asked in a shrill, squeaky tone, almost a croak: "Shall I tell him, Joseph? Shall I tell him?" "Good night!" answered the loquacious bird. "Good night! Good night! Josef!" "Well," my host said slowly, knocking the ashes from his pipe into the fender, "it is a matter, a serious and very curious affair, of which as yet the public have no knowledge. Some things are not allowed to leak out to the papers. This is one of them. I wonder," he went on thoughtfully, after a pause--"I wonder if I told you whether you would keep the secret?"