The Land of Mists

LORD ROXTON had returned from a Central American heavy game shooting, and had at once carried out a series of Alpine ascents which had satisfied and surprised everyone except himself.

"Top of the Alps is becomin' a perfect bear-garden," said he. "Short of Everest there don't seem to be any decent privacy left."

His advent into London was acclaimed by a dinner given in his honor at the 'Travelers' by the Heavy Game Society. The occasion was private and there were no reporters, but Lord Roxton's speech was fixed verbatim in the minds of all his audience and has been imperishably preserved. He writhed for twenty minutes under the flowery and eulogistic periods of the president, and rose himself in the state of confused indignation which the Briton feels when he is publicly approved. "Oh, I say! By Jove! What!" was his oration, after which he resumed his seat and perspired profusely.

Malone was first aware of Lord Roxton's return through McArdle, the crabbed old red-headed news editor, whose bald dome projected further and further from its ruddy fringe as the years still found him slaving at the most grinding of tasks. He retained his keen scent of what was good copy, and it was this sense of his which caused him one winter morning to summon Malone to his presence. He removed the long glass tube which he used as a cigarette-holder from his lips, and he blinked through his big round glasses at his subordinate.

"You know that Lord Roxton is back in London?"

"I had not heard."

"Aye, he's back. Dootless you've heard that he was wounded in the war. He led a small column in East Africa and made a wee war of his own till he got an elephant bullet through his chest. Oh, he's done fine since then, or he couldn't be climbin' these mountains. He's a deevil of a man and aye stirring up something new."

"What is the latest?" asked Malone, eyeing a slip of paper which McArdle was waving between his finger and thumb.

"Well, that's where he impinges on you. I was thinking maybe you could hunt in couples and, there would be copy in it. There's a leaderette in the Evening Standard" He handed it over. It ran thus: