“A young man in breeches, with a cheerful and energetic expression on his face, was playing golf with himself on a course that was located parallel to the sandy beach and the sea, which shone gray in the evening twilight. He didn't just bounce the ball haphazardly, but practiced individual strokes with concentrated fury, like a small, neat whirlwind. He quickly learned many games, but lost interest in them a little faster than he learned the rules. He was ruined by his penchant for wonderful sentences, thanks to which a person could learn to play the violin in six lessons or acquire perfect French pronunciation through correspondence courses. He lived in a rarefied atmosphere of tempting advertising and rosy hopes. The young man was currently private secretary to Admiral Michael Craven, owner of a large house behind a park bordering a golf course. Being ambitious, he did not intend to remain anyone's personal secretary indefinitely. But he was smart enough to know that the best way to get out of secretarial work was to be an excellent secretary. Accordingly, he was a very good secretary, and dealt with the Admiral's ever-accumulating backlog of correspondence with the same concentrated zeal with which he approached a golf ball. Now he had to deal only with correspondence, and he was free to act at his own discretion, because the admiral had been at sea for the last six months, and although he was now returning home, he was not expected for the next few hours, and perhaps even days ... "< /p>