oseph in the habit
of keeping his men up to the mark. The method was eminently successful.
His coloured compeers crowded round him "all of a grin," as he himself
described it, and eager to do his slightest behest. From the throne to
the back-kitchen the secret of success is the art of managing men--and
women.

CHAPTER VII. THE SECRET OF THE SIMIACINE

Surtout, Messieurs, pas de zele.

Such was the meeting of Victor Durnovo and Jack Meredith. Two men with
absolutely nothing in common--no taste, no past, no kinship--nothing but
the future. Such men as Fate loves to bring together for her own strange
purposes. What these purposes are none of us can tell. Some hold that
Fate is wise. She is not so yet, but she cannot fail to acquire wisdom
some day, because she experiments so industriously. She is ever
bringing about new combinations, and one can only trust that she, the
experimenter, is as keenly disappointed in the result as are we, the
experimented.

To Jack Meredith Victor Durnovo conveyed the impression of little
surprise and a slight local interest. He was a man who was not quite a
gentleman; but for himself Jack did not give great heed to this. He had
associated with many such; for, as has been previously intimated, he
had moved in London society, where there are many men who are not quite
gentlemen. The difference of a good coat and that veiled insolence which
passes in some circles for the ease of good breeding had no weight with
the keen son of Sir John Meredith, and Victor Durnovo fared no worse in
his companion's estimation because he wore a rough coat and gave small
attention to his manners. He attracted and held Jack's attention by a
certain open-air manliness which was in keeping with the situation and
with his life. Sportsmen, explorers and wanderers were not new to Jack;
for nowadays one may never know what manner of man is inside a faultless
dress-suit. It is an age of disappearing, via Charing Cross station in
a first-class carriage, to a life of backwooding, living from hand to
mouth, starving in desert, prairie, pampas or Arctic wild, with, all the
while, a big balance at Cox's. And most of us come back again and put on
the dress-suit and the white tie with a certain sense of restfulness and
comfort.

Jack Meredith had known many such. He had, in a small way, done the same
himself. But he had never met one of the men who do not go home--who
possess no dress-coat and no use for it--who