Money was the first object. Brains he could command in plenty. He envisaged London as his El Dorado. The history of his exploitation of the capitalist and landowner would, if it were published, become a text-book on the science and remain forever a classic. He forced wealth-guarding doors of whose existence he had been ignorant six months before; by a stroke of the genius which had brought him his position in China, he secured the support, financial and moral, without the control of an important group of newspapers; he enlisted the aid of every possible unit in his rapidly increasing circle of acquaintance. The scope of the Weekly had extended far beyond the modest bounds of its conception. Originally it was to be an appeal to the thinkers of all nations. “Damn thinkers,” said Baltazar. “They’re as scarce as angels and about as useful. We want to put thoughts into the heads of those that don’t think. It’s the Doers we want to get hold of. A thing academic is a thing dead. This is going to live.” Some of the superior smiled at his enthusiasm; but Baltazar damned them and went his way. This was going to be the Great Teaching Crusade of the War, the most far-sweeping instrument of propaganda known to journalism. He pulled all strings, brought in all parties. A high dignitary of the Labour World and a Tory Duke of unimpeachable integrity found themselves appointed as Trustees of The New Universe Publication Fund. Money flowed in. One day he ran across Pillivant, in St. James’s Street, Pillivant mainly individualized by a sable fur coat and a lustrous silk hat and a monstrous cigar cutting his red face like a fifteen-inch gun cutting the deck of a battleship. Baltazar greeted him as a long-lost brother and haled him off to lunch at his club. Mellowed by the club’s famous Chambertin and 1870 port, he took a rosy view of all kinds of worlds including The New Universe, as presented by his host. It was a great scheme, he agreed. He was sick of all newspapers, no matter of what shades of opinion. They were all the same. Honesty was not in them. Nor was there honesty in any Government. Men with not a quarter of what he had done for the country to their credit, were being rewarded with peerages and baronetcies. In the New Year’s Honours List he had not been mentioned. Not even offered a beastly knighthood. But it didn’t matter. He was a patriot. And it was very fine old brandy, and he didn’t mind if he did have another glass. Still, if a man put down a thousand pounds for a thing, it was only business prudence to know where he stood.