Chapter IX. The Man Who Spoke Latin

Mementoes of Average Jones' exploits in his chosen field hang on the walls of his quiet sanctum. Here the favored visitor may see the two red-ink dots on a dated sheet of paper, framed in with the card of a chemist and an advertised sale of lepidopteroe, which drove a famous millionaire out of the country. Near by are displayed the exploitation of a lure for black-bass, strangely perforated (a man's reason hung on those pin-pricks), and a scrawled legend which seems to spell "Mercy" (two men's lives were sacrificed to that); while below them, set in somber black, is the funeral notice of a dog worth a million dollars; facing the call for a trombone-player which made a mayor, and the mathematical formula which saved a governor. But nowhere does the observer find any record of one of the Ad-Visor's most curious cases, running back two thousand years; for its owner keeps it in his desk drawer, whence the present chronicler exhumed it, by accident, one day. Average Jones has always insisted that he scored a failure on this, because, through no possible fault of his own, he was unable to restore a document of the highest historical and literary importance. Of that, let the impartial reader judge.

It was while Average Jones was waiting for a break of that deadlock of events which, starting from the flat-dweller with the poisoned face, finally worked out the strange fate of Telfik Bey, that he sat, one morning, breakfasting late. The cool and breezy inner portico of the Cosmic Club, where small tables overlook a gracious fountain shimmering with the dart and poise of goldfish, was deserted save for himself, a summer-engagement star actor, a specialist in carbo-hydrates, and a famous adjuster of labor troubles; the four men being fairly typical of the club's catholicity of membership. Contrary to his impeccant habit, Average Jones bore the somewhat frazzled aspect of a man who has been up all night. Further indication of this inhered in the wide yawn, of which he was in mid-enjoyment, when a hand on his shoulder cut short his ecstasy.

"Sorry to interrupt so valuable an exercise," said a languid voice. "But--" and the voice stopped.

"Hello, Bert," returned the Ad-Visor, looking up at the faultlessly clad slenderness of his occasional coadjutor, Robert Bertram. "Sit down and keep me awake till the human snail who's hypothetically ministering to my wants can get me some coffee."

"What particular phase of intellectual debauchery have you been up to now?" inquired Bertram, lounging into the chair opposite.

"Trying to forget my troubles by chasing up a promising lead which failed to pan, out. 'Wanted: a Tin Nose,' sounds pretty good, eh?"

"It is music to my untutored ear," answered Bertram.

"But it turned out to be merely an error of the imbecile, or perhaps facetious printer, who sets up the