, but not a particular friend of Stranleigh's;
nevertheless, a Duke overtops a mere Earl in social eminence, much as
the Singer building overtops the structure next to it.

Wentworth Parkes told Stranleigh he had been in America for something
more than a year. He had been very successful, making plenty of money,
but expending it with equal celerity. Now he determined to get hold of
something that contained princely possibilities for the future. This he
had secured by means of an option on the Sterling Motor Company at
Detroit, and the plant alone, he alleged, was worth more than the
capital needed to bring the factory up to its full output. J. E.
Sterling, he went on to explain, knew more about automobile designing
than anyone else in the world, notwithstanding the fact that he was
still a young man. He would undoubtedly prove to be the true successor
of Edison, and everyone knew what fortunes had come to those who
interested themselves in the products of the great Thomas Alva, who up
to date had proved to be the most successful money-making inventor the
world had ever seen, to which Lord Stranleigh calmly agreed. Well, J. E.
Sterling was just such another, and all a man required to enter the
combination, was the small sum of one hundred thousand dollars. This
would purchase a share in the business which might be sold within a year
or two for millions. Detroit was the centre of automobile manufacturing
in America; a delightful city to live in; the finest river in the world
running past its doors, with a greater tonnage of shipping than passed
through the Suez Canal.

Mr. Parkes was a glib and efficient talker, who might have convinced
anyone with money to spare, but he felt vaguely that his fluency was not
producing the intended effect on Lord Stranleigh. His difficulty
heretofore had been to obtain access to men of means, and now that he
had got alongside the most important of them all, he was nonplussed to
notice that his eloquence somehow missed its mark. Stranleigh remained
scrupulously courteous, but was quite evidently not in the least
interested. So shrewd a man as Parkes might have known that it is not
easy to arouse enthusiasm in a London clubman under the most favourable
auspices, and this difficulty is enormously increased when the person
attacked is already so rich that any further access of wealth offers no
temptation to him.

Parkes had come to believe that the accumulation of gold was the only
thing th