"Who's asleep this time?"
"Not I," replied his friend, "only dreaming."
"Of the success of 'The Purple Kangaroo'?" asked the journalist. "Well, you'll have it, old man—see if you don't—and live to bless the name of Marchmont and the Daily Leader. Why, thousands will be reading your book before the week's out."
"What do you mean?" gasped the Englishman. "Surely you don't know—?" For he feared the discovery of his little plot.
"Know!" replied the journalist. "I know that your book has leaped at one bound from fiction to the exalted sphere of politics. Now don't you breathe a word of this, for it's professional, but the Spanish secret-service agents have taken the title of your novel as their password. The city is watched by our own special corps of detectives, and the instant 'The Purple Kangaroo' is used in a suspicious sense we arrest the spies and unravel the plot."
"But, good heavens, man! You don't understand—" began Banborough.
"I understand it all. I tell you the Daily Leader will not shrink from its duty. It'll leave no stone unturned to hound the offenders down. I dare say they may be making arrests even now, and once started, we'll never pause till every Spanish sympathiser who has knowledge of the plot is under lock and key."
"Stop! Stop!" cried Cecil. "You don't know what you're doing!"
"Oh, trust me for that, and think of the boom your book'll get. I'll make it my special care. I tell you 'The Purple Kangaroo' will be all the rage."
"But you're making a ghastly mistake," insisted the author. "You must listen to me—"