Three men sat in the Cosmic Club discussing the question: “What’s the matter with Jones?” Waldemar, the oldest of the conferees, was the owner, and at times the operator, of an important and decent newspaper. His heavy face wore the expression of good-humored power, characteristic of the experienced and successful journalist. Beside him sat Robert Bertram, the club idler, slender and languidly elegant. The third member of the conference was Jones himself. Average Jones had come by his nickname i

From his inner sanctum, Average Jones stared obliquely out upon the whirl of Fifth Avenue, warming itself under a late March sun. In the outer offices a line of anxious applicants was being disposed of by his trained assistants. To the advertising expert’s offices had come that day but three cases difficult enough to be referred to the Ad-Visor himself. Two were rather intricate financial lures which Average Jones was able to dispose of by a mere “Don’t.” The third was a Spiritualist announcemen

“Not good enough,” said Average Jones, laying aside a sheet of paper upon which was pasted a newspaper clipping. “We can’t afford luxuries, Simpson.” The confidential clerk rubbed his high, pale forehead indeterminately. “But five thousand dollars, Mr. Jones,” he protested. “Would pay a year’s office rent, you’re thinking. True. Nevertheless I can’t see the missing Mr. Hoff as a sound professional proposition.” “So you think it would be impossible to find him?” “Now, why should I think any such

“Want a job, Average?” Bertram, his elegance undimmed by the first really trying weather of the early summer, drifted to the coolest spot in the Ad-Visor’s sanctum and spread his languid length along a wicker settee. “Give a man breathing space, can’t you?” returned Average Jones. “This is hotter than Baja California.” “Why, I assumed that your quest of the quack’s scion would have trained you down fit for anything.” “Haven’t even caught up with the clippings that Simpson floods me with, since I

Some days after the recovery of the houseboat, Average Jones sat at breakfast, according to his custom, in the café of the Hotel Palatia. Several matters were troubling his normally serene mind. First of these was the loss of the trail which should have led to Harvey Craig. Second, as a minor issue, the Oriental papers found in the deserted Bellair Street apartment had been proved, by translation, to consist mainly of revolutionary sound and fury, signifying, to the person most concerned, nothin

“Cabs for comfort; cars for company,” was an apothegm which Average Jones had evolved from experience. A professed student of life, he maintained, must keep in touch with life at every feasible angle. No experience should come amiss to a detective; he should be a pundit of all knowledge. A detective he now frankly considered himself; and the real drudgery of his unique profession of Ad-Visor was supportable only because of the compensating thrill of the occasional chase, the radiance of the Adve

“The thing is a fake,” declared Bertram. He slumped heavily into a chair, and scowled at Average Jones’ well-littered desk, whereon he had just tossed a sheet of paper. His usually impeccable hair was tousled. His trousers evinced a distinct tendency to bag at the knees, and his coat was undeniably wrinkled. That the elegant and flawless dilettante of the Cosmic Club should have come forth, at eleven o’clock of a morning, in such a state of comparative disreputability, argued an upheaval of mind

In the Cosmic Club Mr. Algernon Spofford was a figure of distinction. Amidst the varied, curious, eccentric, brilliant, and even slightly unbalanced minds which made the organization unique, his was the only wholly stolid and stupid one. Club tradition declared that he had been admitted solely for the beneficent purpose of keeping the more egotistic members in a permanent and pleasing glow of superiority. He was very rich, but otherwise quite harmless. In an access of unappreciated cynicism, Ave

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 l

“Morrison has jammed the Personal Liberty bill through,” said Waldemar, scrawling a head on his completed editorial, with one eye on the clock, which pointed to midnight. “That was to be expected, wasn’t it?” asked Average Jones. “Oh, yes,” replied the editor-owner of the Universal in his heavy bass. “And now the governor announces he will veto it.” “Thereby bringing the whole power of the gambling ring down on him like an avalanche.” “Naturally. Morrison has declared open war against ‘Pharisee

To this day, Average Jones maintains that he felt a distinct thrill at first sight of the advertisement. Yet Fate might well have chosen a more appropriate ambush in any one of a hundred of the strange clippings which were grist to the Ad-Visor’s mill. Out of a bulky pile of the day’s paragraphs, however, it was this one that leaped, significant, to his eye. WANTED—Ten thousand loathly black beetles, by A leaseholder who contracted to leave a house in the same condition as he found it. Ackroyd,