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However, Stuart was zealous in trying to fix situations so that human Eridaneans could become married and so have children. Otherwise, the Race would die out, and the Capelleans would be victor by default. That is, they would have if they had not also had the same problem as their enemies.
    Passepartout seldom got his orders by word of mouth. Almost always it was by code transmitted via playing cards. He would be seated in a restaurant catering to people of his class, and a man at a table by his would be playing patience. Passepartout would be observing the cards with the greatest of interest, of course. And so the cards would tell him in telegraphic language what he was to do next. And Passepartout would do it.
    He had been in a restaurant in Tours when the cards informed him he was to go to London. While eating oysters in a Cheapside inn, the cards, dealt by a red-faced, fat middle-aged lady, told him to get hired as valet for a Lord Windermere. This was the first of his investigations, all of which had resulted in nothing Capellean. But Passepartout thought that some of the things he had uncovered could be, probably would be, used by the Eridanean chief to the advantage of the Race.
    The ninth person he’d worked for had been General Sir William Clayton of Sallust’s. Passepartout had not ever actually valeted for the old baronet, since Sir William was absent from the manor of Sallust’s House, Oxfordshire. He was away somewhere in southern or south central Africa at this time. Apparently, he was once again looking for the site of the ancient city of Ophir, if Sir William’s wife was telling the truth. She was a good-looking woman of thirty-seven years of age, the eleventh wife of the seventy-three-year-old adventurer. Passepartout’s predecessor had been fired when he was caught drinking brandy from the master’s stock. Lady Martha Clayton had hired the Frenchman to be the baronet’s valet when he got back from the Dark Continent. Meanwhile, he was to be both butler and manager of the household, which included a maid, a cook, a gardener, Lady Martha, an infant, William, by Sir William’s tenth marriage, and an infant, Martha, by the present wife. Passepartout used “the present” because the baronet’s wives did not seem to have much survival value. Except for one who had divorced him, all had died a few years after marrying him. There was no suspicion of foul play in this series of fatalities. The baronet seemed to radiate an aura which attracted beautiful women and then scorched them. Like moths to a light, thought Passepartout.
    He did not understand why women kept marrying him, since everybody seemed to know what happened to his wives. But then everybody thinks he or she is special; death isn’t going to notice them.
    Passepartout was puzzled by his assignment. Sir William’s flamboyant lifestyle did not make him a likely candidate for Capelleanship.
    Passepartout did not stay long at Sallust’s House, however. Apparently, the chief was interested mainly in finding out where Sir William was and how long he would be gone. He had left the country secretly and with no word to his intimates of his destination. But his wife knew, and so Passepartout read, very late at night in the study, a letter she had written but not yet posted to a missionary friend in southeast Africa. She confided to her that Sir William was again on the old quest for Solomon’s treasure city. Would her friend report anything she heard about him? Sir William, despite his age, was a remarkably vigorous man, she wrote. (As who should know better than she, who had borne him two children in the past three years, Passepartout thought.) He might be gone a long time. Meantime, their son, Phileas, had died of the colic. But if her friend happened to run into Sir William, she was to say nothing of this. Sir William must not be deterred from his quest.
    Passepartout, after five years on the island, was accustomed to the eccentricity of the