ng--no other
merit. Well yes. He had another name, but that's pure luck--his own
name of de Barral which he did not invent. I don't think that a mere
Jones or Brown could have fished out from the depths of the Incredible
such a colossal manifestation of human folly as that man did. But it
may be that I am under-estimating the alacrity of human folly in rising
to the bait. No doubt I am. The greed of that absurd monster is
incalculable, unfathomable, inconceivable. The career of de Barral
demonstrates that it will rise to a naked hook. He didn't lure it with
a fairy-tale. He hadn't enough imagination for it..."

"Was he a foreigner?" I asked. "It's clearly a French name. I suppose
it _was_ his name?"

"Oh, he didn't invent it. He was born to it, in Bethnal Green, as it
came out during the proceedings. He was in the habit of alluding to his
Scotch connections. But every great man has done that. The mother, I
believe, was Scotch, right enough. The father de Barral whatever his
origins retired from the Customs Service (tide-waiter I think), and
started lending money in a very, very small way in the East-End to
people connected with the docks, stevedores, minor barge-owners,
ship-chandlers, tally clerks, all sorts of very small fry. He made his
living at it. He was a very decent man I believe. He had enough
influence to place his only son as junior clerk in the account
department of one of the Dock Companies. `Now, my boy,' he said to him,
`I've given you a fine start.' But de Barral didn't start. He stuck.
He gave perfect satisfaction. At the end of three years he got a small
rise of salary and went out courting in the evenings. He went courting
the daughter of an old sea-captain who was a churchwarden of his parish
and lived in an old badly preserved Georgian house with a garden: one of
these houses standing in a reduced bit of `grounds' that you discover in
a labyrinth of the most sordid streets, exactly alike and composed of
six-roomed hutches."

Some of them were the vicarages of slum parishes. The old sailor had
got hold of one cheap, and de Barral got hold of his daughter--which was
a good bargain for him. The old sailor was very good to the young
couple and very fond of their little girl. Mrs de Barral was an
equable, unassuming woman, at that time. With a fund of simple gaiety,
and with no ambitions; but, woman-like, she longed for change and for
something interesting to happen now an