Philipson smiled. 'Have no fear,' he said. 'I fully understand that the burden of consumption will rest upon me. It is, I may say, a habit of mine to drink freely, and that of the best obtainable, on all occasions. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to drink large quantities of good wine.' I thought this was a pretty naive assertion for a man to make, but Philipson seemed quite unconscious of anything queer about the remark he had made. He poured out two glasses, pledged me politely, and continued to sip with zest all the time he was talking. I fully expected to see him get soused, but, far from that, beyond causing him to speak with a little deeper earnestness, the wine left Saunders Philipson entirely unaffected. His speech remained clear, with a sort of musical, incisive clearness it always had, and the clarity with which he unfolded his tale grew, if anything, as the night advanced. 'You are, I understand, pretty hard up at present, Mirlees?' he began, coolly. 'That's so,' I replied, 'but I don't know how you came to understand it.' 'Do not trouble to inquire. I know many things about many people that would surprise them.' And with that he began to prove it, quoting facts from my career since I had come East that I had thought unknown to anybody but Ronald Mirlees. 'So you see,' he concluded, with a business-like pull at his glass, 'I have a fair general idea of your status and antecedents. But it was only last night I found out about you the fact that really concerns me.' 'What was that?' 'That you are a comrade to be relied upon,' he said with the sincerest and most matter-of-fact air in the world, 'and that you are free from any absurd prejudice against the Asiatic as such.' 'What makes you think that?' 'Your actions have proved that you, at least, do not consider him less worthy of consideration than a European. How many white men would have stepped in to see fair play for a Chinese as you did last night?' 'Perhaps not many.' 'Very few indeed at the risk of their own lives. That fact alone would have singled you out in my mind as the ideal man to help me.' 'What do you want me to do?' 'I want you to partner me in about the biggest adventure two men ever undertook.' 'And you think I'd be more inclined to say yes because I'm on the rocks?'