“And John Briggs?” “A pseudonym. Briggs was my mother’s name. I am English on both sides, though my great-grandfather’s people were Maltese. My father, however, was a naturalized Russian. I’ve mentioned it in the book.” “Quite so,” said the publisher. “I only wanted to get things clear. And now as to terms. Have you any suggestion?” Afterwards, Alexis Triona confessed to a wild impulse to ask for a hundred pounds—outright sale—and to a sudden lack of audacity which kept him silent. The terms which the publisher proposed, when the royalty system and the probabilities of such a book’s profits were explained to him, made him gasp with wonder. And when, in consideration, said the publisher, of his present impecunious position, he was offered an advance in respect of royalties exceeding the hundred pounds of his crazy promptings, his heart thumped until it became an all but intolerable pain. “Do you think,” he asked, amazed that his work should have such market value, “that I could earn my living by writing?” “Undoubtedly.” The publisher beamed on the new author. “You have the matter, you have the gift, the style, the humour, the touch. I’m sure I could place things for you. Indeed, it would be to our common advantage, pending publication. Only, of course, you mustn’t use any of the matter in the book. You quite understand?” Alexis Triona understood. He went away dancing on air. Write? His brain seethed with ideas. That the written expression of them should open the gates of Fortune was a new conception. He had put together the glowing, vivid book impelled by strange, unknown forces. It was, as he had confidently declared, worth publishing. But the possible reward was beyond his dreams. And he could see more visions. . . . So he went back to his garage and drove idle people to dinners and theatres, and in his scanty leisure wrote strange romances of love and war in Circassia and Tartary, and, through the agency of the powerful publishing house, sold them to solid periodicals, until the public mind became gradually familiarized with his name. It was only when the book was published, and, justifying the confidence of the great firm, blazed into popularity, that Triona discarded his livery and all that appertained to the mythical John Briggs and, arraying himself in the garb of ordinary citizenship, entered—to use, with a difference, the famous trope of a departed wit—a lion into the den of London’s Daniels. For, in their hundreds, they had come to judgment. But knowing very little of the Imperial Russian Secret Service in Turkestan, or the ways of the inhabitants of the Ural Mountains, or, at that time, of Bolshevik horrors in the remote confines of Asia, they tore each other to pieces, while the lion stepped, with serene modesty, in the midst of them. * * * * *