was free, and this result had been
attained through his frank negative answer to the question, "The law
bores me--is there any reason why I should let it continue to bore
me?" There was no reason. Instead of the law he took up life. Of
business preoccupations naught remained but his investments. He
possessed a gift for investing money. He had helped the man who had
first put the Reveille Motor Horn on the market. He had had a mighty
holding of shares in the Reveille Syndicate Limited, which had so
successfully promoted the Reveille Motor Horn Company Limited. And in
the latter, too, he held many shares. The Reveille Motor Horn Company
had prospered and had gone into the manufacture of speedometers,
illuminating outfits, and all manner of motor-car accessories.

On the outbreak of war G.J. had given himself up for lost. "This
is the end," he had said, as a member of the sore-shaken investing
public. He had felt sick under the region of the heart. In particular
he had feared for his Reveille shares. No one would want to buy
expensive motor horns in the midst of the greatest war that the world,
etc., etc.

Still the Reveille Company, after sustaining the shock, had somehow
continued to do a pretty good business. It had patriotically offered
its plant and services to the War Office, and had been repulsed with
contumely and ignominy. The War Office had most caustically intimated
to the Reveille Company that it had no use and never under any
conceivable circumstances could have any use whatever for the Reveille
Company, and that the Reveille Company was a forward and tedious
jackanapes, unworthy even of an articulate rebuff. Now the autograph
letter with the Reveille note-heading was written by the managing
director (who represented G.J.'s interests on the Board), and it
stated that the War Office had been to the Reveille Company, and
implored it to enlarge itself, and given it vast orders at grand
prices for all sorts of things that it had never made before. The
profits of 1915 would be doubled, if not trebled--perhaps quadrupled.
G.J. was relieved, uplifted; and he sniggered at his terrible
forebodings of August and September. Ruin? He was actually going to
make money out of the greatest war that the world, etc. etc. And why
not? Somebody had to make money, and somebody had to pay for the
war in income tax. For the first time the incubus of the war seemed
lighter upon G.J. And also he need feel no slightest concern about