ke it up."

Montague was interested, and he looked over the plans and descriptions
which his friend had brought, and said that he would see the working
model, and talk the proposition over with others. And so the Major took
his departure.

The first person Montague spoke to about it was Oliver, with whom he
chanced to be lunching, at the latter's club. This was the "All Night"
club, a meeting-place of fast young Society men and millionaire
Bohemians, who made a practice of going to bed at daylight, and had
taken for their motto the words of Tennyson--"For men may come and men
may go, but I go on for ever." It was not a proper club for his brother
to join, Oliver considered; Montague's "game" was the heavy
respectable, and the person to put him up was General Prentice. But he
was permitted to lunch there with his brother to chaperon him--and also
Reggie Mann, who happened in, fresh from talking over the itinerary of
the foreign prince with Mrs. Ridgley-Clieveden, and bringing a
diverting account of how Mrs. R.-C. had had a fisticuffs with her maid.

Montague mentioned the invention casually, and with no idea that his
brother would have an opinion one way or the other. But Oliver had
quite a vigorous opinion: "Good God, Allan, you aren't going to let
yourself be persuaded into a thing like that!"

"But what do you know about it?" asked the other. "It may be a
tremendous thing."

"Of course!" cried Oliver. "But what can you tell about it? You'll be
like a child in other people's hands, and they'll be certain to rob
you. And why in the world do you want to take risks when you don't have
to?"

"I have to put my money somewhere," said Montague.

"His first fee is burning a hole in his pocket!" put in Reggie Mann,
with a chuckle. "Turn it over to me, Mr. Montague; and let me spend it
in a gorgeous entertainment for Alice; and the prestige of it will
bring you more cases than you can handle in a lifetime!"

"He had much better spend it all for soda water than buy a lot of coal
chutes with it," said Oliver: "Wait awhile, and let me find you some
place to put your money, and you'll see that you don't have to take any
risks."

"I had no idea of taking it up until I'd made certain of it," replied
the other. "And those whose judgment I took would, of course, go in
also."

The younger man thought for a moment. "You are going to dine with Major
Venable to-night, aren't you?" he asked; and when the other answered in
the a