is colleagues knew, or indeed even himself knew.

Probably only Fleming the Scotsman--another of the Partners--with a
somewhat dour exterior, an indomitable will, and a caution which
compelled him to make good every step of the way before him, and so
cultivate a long sight financially and politically, understood how
extraordinary Wallstein's work had been--only Fleming, and Rudyard
Byng, who knew better than any and all.

There was also De Lancy Scovel, who had become a biggish figure in the
Rand world because he had been a kind of financial valet to Wallstein
and Byng, and, it was said, had been a real unofficial valet to Rhodes,
being an authority on cooking, and on brewing a punch, and a master of
commissariat in the long marches which Rhodes made in the days when he
trekked into Rhodesia. It was indeed said that he had made his first
ten thousand pounds out of two trips which Rhodes made en route to
Lobengula, and had added to this amount on the principle of compound
multiplication when the Matabele war came; for here again he had a
collateral interest in the commissariat.

Rhodes, with a supreme carelessness in regard to money, with an
indifference to details which left his mind free for the working of a
few main ideas, had no idea how many cheques he gave on the spur of the
moment to De Lancy Scovel in this month or in that, in this year or in
that, for this thing or for that--cheques written very often on the
backs of envelopes, on the white margin of a newspaper, on the fly-leaf
of a book or a blank telegraph form. The Master Man was so stirred by
half-contemptuous humour at the sycophancy and snobbery of his vain
slave, who could make a salad out of anything edible, that, caring
little what men were, so long as they did his work for him, he once
wrote a cheque for two thousand pounds on the starched cuff of his
henchman's "biled shirt" at a dinner prepared for his birthday.

So it was that, with the marrow-bones thrown to him, De Lancy Scovel
came to a point where he could follow Wallstein's and Rhodes' lead
financially, being privy to their plans, through eavesdropping on the
conferences of his chiefs. It came as a surprise to his superiors that
one day's chance discovery showed De Lancy Scovel to be worth fifty
thousand pounds; and from that time on they used him for many a purpose
in which it was expedient their own hands should not appear. They felt
confident that a man who could so carefully and secretl