Cole," said Frank suddenly, "were you in town last
night?"

Jasper Cole shot a swift glance at him.

"Why?"

"Were you near Victoria Docks?"

"What a question to ask!" said the other, with his inscrutable smile,
and, turning abruptly, walked in to the waiting Mr. Brandon.

Frank finished work at five-thirty that night and left Jasper Cole and a
junior clerk to the congenial task of checking the securities. At nine
o'clock the clerk went home, leaving Jasper alone in the bank. Mr.
Brandon, the manager, was a bachelor and occupied a flat above the bank
premises. From time to time he strode in, his big pipe in the corner of
his mouth. The last of these occasions was when Jasper Cole had replaced
the last ledger in Mr. Minute's private safe.

"Half past eleven," said the manager disapprovingly, "and you have had
no dinner."

"I can afford to miss a dinner," laughed the other.

"Lucky man," said the manager.

Jasper Cole passed out into the street and called a passing taxi to the
curb.

"Charing Cross Station," he said.

He dismissed the cab in the station courtyard, and after a while walked
back to the Strand and hailed another.

"Victoria Dock Road," he said in a low voice.

CHAPTER V

JOHN MINUTE'S LEGACY

La Rochefoucauld has said that prudence and love are inconsistent. May
Nuttall, who had never explored the philosophies of La Rochefoucauld,
had nevertheless seen that quotation in the birthday book of an
acquaintance, and the saying had made a great impression upon her. She
was twenty-one years of age, at which age girls are most impressionable
and are little influenced by the workings of pure reason. They are
prepared to take their philosophies ready-made, and not disinclined to
accept from others certain rigid standards by which they measure their
own elastic temperaments.

Frank Merrill was at once a comfort and the cause of a certain
half-ashamed resentment, since she was of the age which resents
dependence. The woman who spends any appreciable time in the discussion
with herself as to whether she does or does not love a man can only have
her doubts set at rest by the discovery of somebody whom she loves
better. She liked Frank, and liked him well enough to accept the little
ring which marked the beginning of a new relationship which was not
exactly an engagement, yet brought to her friendship a glamour which it
had never before possessed.

She liked him well enough to want his love