g 'em for a rise." He opened a newspaper
he had bought in the restaurant. "I see that Jorris and
Walters--they're the two oil men--deny that they've ever met or that
they're going to amalgamate. But can you believe these people?" he
asked. "My dear old thing, the mendacity of these wretched
financiers----"

"Have you ever seen them?" asked Hamilton, to whom the names of Jorris
and Walters were as well known as to any other man who read his daily
newspaper.

"Seen them?" said Bones. "My dear old fellow, I've met them time and
time again. Two of the jolliest old birds in the world. Well, here's
luck!"

At that particular moment Mr. Walters and Mr. Jorris were sitting
together in the library of a house in Berkeley Square, the blinds being
lowered and the curtains being drawn, and Mr. Walters was saying:

"We'll have to make this thing public on Wednesday. My dear fellow, I
nearly fainted when I heard that that impossible young person had
photographed us together. When do you go back to Paris?"

"I think I had better stay here," said Mr. Jorris. "Did the young man
bleed you?"

"Only for six thousand," said the pleasant Mr. Walters. "I hope the
young beggar's a bear in oil," he added viciously.

But Bones, as we know, was a bull.

CHAPTER VI

A DEAL IN JUTE

It is a reasonable theory that every man of genius is two men, one
visible, one unseen and often unsuspected by his counterpart. For who
has not felt the shadow's influence in dealing with such as have the
Spark? Napoleon spoke of stars, being Corsican and a mystic. Those
who met him in his last days were uneasily conscious that the second
Bonaparte had died on the eve of Waterloo, leaving derelict his
brother, a stout and commonplace man who was in turn sycophantic,
choleric, and pathetic, but never great.

Noticeable is the influence of the Shadow in the process of
money-making. It is humanly impossible for some men to be fortunate.
They may amass wealth by sheer hard work and hard reasoning, but if
they seek a shorter cut to opulence, be sure that short cut ends in a
cul-de-sac where sits a Bankruptcy Judge and a phalanx of stony-faced
creditors. "Luck" is not for them--they were born single.

For others, the whole management of life is taken from their hands by
their busy Second, who ranges the world to discover opportunities for
his partner.

So it comes about that there are certain men, and Augustus
Tibbetts--or, as he was n