“Perfectly,” replied the other with his bootlace in his teeth.

“Under those conditions,” continued Turnbull, his voice coming through the hole with a slight note of trepidation very unusual with him, “I have a suggestion to make, if that can be called a suggestion, which has probably occurred to you as readily as to me.  Until the actual event comes off we are practically in the position if not of comrades, at least of business partners.  Until the event comes off, therefore I should suggest that quarrelling would be inconvenient and rather inartistic; while the ordinary exchange of politeness between man and man would be not only elegant but uncommonly practical.”

“You are perfectly right,” answered MacIan, with his melancholy voice, “in saying that all this has occurred to me.  All duellists should behave like gentlemen to each other.  But we, by the queerness of our position, are something much more than either duellists or gentlemen.  We are, in the oddest and most exact sense of the term, brothers—­in arms.”

“Mr. MacIan,” replied Turnbull, calmly, “no more need be said.”  And he closed the trap once more.

They had reached Finchley Road before he opened it again.

Then he said, “Mr. MacIan, may I offer you a cigar.  It will be a touch of realism.”

“Thank you,” answered Evan.  “You are very kind.”  And he began to smoke in the cab.

IV.  A DISCUSSION AT DAWN

The duellists had from their own point of view escaped or conquered the chief powers of the modern world.  They had satisfied the magistrate, they had tied the tradesman neck and heels, and they had left the police behind.  As far as their own feelings went they had melted into a monstrous sea; they were but the fare and driver of one of the million hansoms that fill London streets.  But they had forgotten something; they had forgotten journalism.  They had forgotten that there exists in the modern world, perhaps for the first time in history, a class of people whose interest is not that things should happen well or happen badly, should happen successfully or happen unsuccessfully, should happen to the advantage of this party or the advantage of that part, but whose interest simply is that things should happen.

It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions.  We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding.  We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding.  Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth.  That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common.  But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus