He had never spared himself.

He had been a model special correspondent ever ready at a moment's notice to set off to the ends of the earth.

And now, all of a sudden, behold him declining a task after his own heart, and, as I gathered from Arbuthnot, of the greatest political significance, and thereby endangering his peculiar and honourable position on the paper.
"If it had been any other man alive who had turned us down like that," said Arbuthnot, "we would have chucked him altogether.

In fact we didn't tell him that we wouldn't." It was very mysterious; all the more so because Jaffery had never been a man of mystery, like Adrian.

I went away wondering.