ed Harvey talked, he looked straight at one with his clear
blue eyes, and there was no doubting his honesty. "I am very much
obliged to you," said Montague. "Pray tell me what you have to say."

"All right," said the other. "It can be done very quickly. You have
taken a case which involves a great many sacrifices upon your part. And
I wondered if it had ever occurred to you to ask whether you might not
be taken advantage of?"

"How do you mean?" asked Montague.

"Do you know the people who are behind you?" inquired the other. "Do
you know them well enough to be sure what are their motives in the
case?"

Montague hesitated, and thought. "No," he said, "I couldn't say that I
do."

"Then it's just as I thought," replied Harvey. "I've been watching
you--you are an honest man, and you're putting yourself to no end of
trouble from the best of motives. And unless I'm mistaken, you're being
used by men who are not honest, and whom you wouldn't work with if you
knew their purposes."

"What purposes could they have?"

"There are several possibilities. In the first place, it might be a
'strike' suit--somebody who is hoping to be bought off for a big price.
That is what nearly every one thinks is the case. But I don't; I think
it's more likely some one within the company who is trying to put the
administration in a hole."

"Who could that be?" exclaimed Montague, amazed.

"I don't know that. I'm not familiar enough with the situation in the
Fidelity--it's changing all the time. I simply know that there are
factions struggling for the control of it, and hating each other
furiously, and ready to do anything in the world to cripple each other.
You know that their forty millions of surplus gives an enormous power;
I'd rather be able to swing forty millions in the Street than to have
ten millions in my own right. And so the giants are fighting for the
control of those companies; and you can't tell who's in and who's
out--you can never know the real meaning of anything that happens in
the struggle. All that you can be sure of is that the game is crooked
from end to end, and that nothing that happens in it is what it
pretends to be."

Montague listened, half dazed, and feeling as if the ground he stood on
were caving beneath his feet.

"What do you know about those who brought you this case?" asked his
companion, suddenly.

"Not much," he said weakly.

Harvey hesitated a moment. "Understand me, please," he said. "I've no