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drastic step it seemed that those services would never be required. He found himself both relieved and, at the same time, curiously disappointed.
    5
    One goes forth to seek something and finds it not; one returns home and finds the object of one’s search being handed to one by some kind friend on a platter.
    It was on a Tuesday evening that Mr Todhunter decided, on the failure of Mr Chitterwick, that he must abandon his great plan. It was on the very next afternoon that Ferrers, the literary editor of the London Review handed him, in the most casual way, exactly what he wanted. While Mr Todhunter had been searching the highways and byways for a suitable victim, it seemed that one had been lurking complacently all the time right in his path.
    It was a chance question of Mr Todhunter’s which brought the matter to light. Before going to Ferrers’s room to select his book for review he had strolled down another passage to pass the time of day with an old friend of his on the staff, one of the leader writers, to whom in point of fact Mr Todhunter’s own slight connection with the London Review was due. The man was not in his room, and there was another name on the door.
    â€œBy the way,” said Mr Todhunter when he had deposited his ancient brown trilby hat on a file of newspapers in Ferrers’ big room overlooking Fleet Street, “by the way, is Ogilvie away ill? He’s not in his room.”
    Ferrers looked up from the copy he was cutting, blue pencil in hand. “Ill? Not he. He’s the latest to go, that’s all.”
    â€œTo go?” repeated Mr Todhunter, mildly puzzled.
    â€œSacked! Poor old Ogilvie’s been sacked, to put it frankly. They handed him a cheque for six months salary yesterday and told him to clear out.”
    â€œOgilvie sacked?” Mr Todhunter was shocked. Ogilvie, with his big head, bulging with solid brain, and his calm, penetrating pen, had always seemed an integral part of the London Review. “Dear me, I thought he was a fixture here.”
    â€œIt’s a damned shame.” Ferrers, usually discretion in trousers, spoke with unwonted heat. “Just shot him out, like that.”
    One of the fiction reviewers was turning over a huge pile of new novels on a table by the window. “Why?” he asked.
    â€œOh, these blasted internal politics. Too complicated for you to understand, young fellow.”
    The fiction reviewer, who happened to be three months older than his literary editor, grinned amiably. “Sorry, boss.” He was under the delusion that Ferrers disliked being called “boss.”
    â€œLook here,” asked Mr Todhunter. “About Ogilvie. Why did you say he had to go?”
    â€œInternal reorganisation, my boy,” Ferrers told him bitterly. “And do you know what that means?”
    â€œNo,” said Mr Todhunter.
    â€œWell, so far as I can make out it means sack all the men with any guts and retain the spittle-lickers. That’s a fine thing for a paper like this, isn’t it?” Ferrers was genuinely proud of the London Review and its reputation for solid, old-fashioned dignity, honesty and decorum, which he had fought hard to maintain even after the weekly had passed into the control of Consolidated and Periodicals Ltd., who were now its unworthy owners.
    â€œBut what will Ogilvie do?”
    â€œGod knows. He’s got a wife and family to look after somehow.”
    â€œI suppose,” said Mr Todhunter, now much worried, “that he’ll get a job somewhere else without much difficulty?”
    â€œWill he? I doubt it. He’s no chicken, old Ogilvie. Besides, it doesn’t do a man any good to be sacked from Consolidated Periodicals. Remember that, by the way, young fellow,” added Ferrers to the fiction reviewer.
    â€œYou pay me a little more and I wouldn’t give you so many chances,” retorted the fiction reviewer.
    â€œWhat’s the good of