“That’s as good a reason as most.”

“All right. But wait a bit. In me, my dear Aubrey, you see the unsatisfied and inarticulate artist. Temperament and no art. That’s me. Or so I thought, until I got my Idea. I’ve tried writing and I’ve tried painting. The results have on the whole been pitiable — at the best negligible. Music — out of the question. And all the time, here I was, an elderly fogey plagued with the desire to create. Most of all have I hankered after drama, and at first I thought my association with you, a delightful affair from my point of view, I assure you, would do the trick; I would taste, at second hand as it were, the pleasures of creative art. But no, the itch persisted and I was in danger of becoming a disgruntled restless fellow, a nuisance to myself, and a bore to other people.”

“Never that,” murmured Mandrake, lighting a cigarette.

“It would have been the next stage, I assure you. It threatened. And then, in what I cannot but consider an inspired moment, my dear Aubrey, I got my Idea.”

With a crisp movement Jonathan seized his glasses by their nose-piece and plucked them from his face. His eyes were black and extremely bright.

“My Idea,” he repeated. “One Wednesday morning four weeks ago, as I was staring out of my window here and wondering how the devil I should spend the day, it suddenly came to me. It came to me that if I was a ninny with ink and paper, and brush and canvas, and all the rest of it, if I couldn’t express so much as a how-d’ye-do with a stave of music, there was one medium that I had never tried.”

“And what could that wonderful medium be?”

“Flesh and blood.”

“What!”

“Flesh and blood!”

“You are not—” said Mandrake—“I implore you to say you are not going in for social welfare.”