My companion gave a scarcely perceptible start.
“Diogenes is no longer looking for an honest man. Poor fellow, he knows it’s no use. He thought he had an honest man a few years ago in ‘Boss’ Tweed, but the politician fell from the high pedestal of the ‘man higher up’ when he consented to pose for a caricature of himself by Nast. Our friend of the tub and lantern has begun to wonder if when he finds an honest man it will prove to be a bachelor girl! Not long ago President Harper sent a professor from the University of Chicago to tell Diogenes that he could have an honest man as soon as he had bled him for another hundred million. So the philosopher is waiting for—”
“John D. Rockefeller!”
“Your deduction, my dear journalist, does you credit.”
Somewhat piqued that I did not reply, the stranger said:
“Why don’t you express wonder that I knew you were a journalist? Watson always does.”
“There is only one Watson,” I protested. “Besides, it has always seemed to me that he was singularly obtuse. Unless you lent him your spectacles, Watson couldn’t hold down a job in the city room of a New York daily for twenty-four hours. I’m not a journalist, but I acknowledge that ‘newspaper man’ is written all over me, from the pencil in my pocket to my ‘nose for news,’ which is abnormally developed. It’s the easiest thing in the world to tell a newspaper man by his nose, an actor by his clothes and a detective by his cocaine syringe. For instance, you are—”
“The shade of Sherlock Holmes, just returned from a trip to earth. But I really died when I fell over the cliff. That fall made Conan Doyle a Sir. He thought that if he could bring me back to life I would make him an Earl. He tried to breathe in me the breath of life, but while the dear public wept at my death, they viewed my resurrection with indifference. Ghost stories have been exorcised for all time, so I’m back here for good.”
“Did Satan send for you?”
“Yes, to assist him in ultimately securing the three persons on earth whom he is most eagerly awaiting—David Belasco, John Kendrick Bangs, and Marie Corelli.