this case."

"Did he know about Ellis?" asked Montague.

"Yes," said the other, "he had found out that much. It was he who told
me that originally. He says that Ellis has been sponging off the
company for years--he has a big salary that he never earns, and has
borrowed something like a quarter of a million dollars on worthless
securities."

Montague gave a gasp.

"Yes," laughed Harvey. "But after all, that's a little matter. The
trouble with Freddie Vandam is that that sort of thing is all he sees;
and so he'll never be able to make out the mystery. He knows that this
clique or that in the company is plotting to get some advantage, or to
use him for their purposes--but he never realizes how the big men are
pulling the wires behind the scenes. Some day they'll throw him
overboard altogether, and then he'll realize how they've played with
him. That's what this Hasbrook case means, you know--they simply want
to frighten him with a threat of getting the company's affairs into the
courts and the newspapers."

Montague sat for a while in deep thought.

"What would you think would be Wyman's relation to the matter?" he
asked, at last.

"I wouldn't know," said Harvey. "He's supposed to be Freddie's
backer--but what can you tell in such a tangle?"

"It is certainly a mess," said Montague.

"There's no bottom to it," said the other. "Absolutely--it would take
your breath away! Just listen to what Vandam told me to-day!"

And then Harvey named one of the directors of the Fidelity who was well
known as a philanthropist. Having heard that the wife of one of his
junior partners had met with an accident in childbirth, and that the
doctor had told her husband that if she ever had another child, she
would die, this man had asked, "Why don't you have her life insured?"
The other replied that he had tried, and the companies had refused her.
"I'll fix it for you," said he; and so they put in another application,
and the director came to Freddie Vandam and had the policy put through
"by executive order." Seven months later the woman died, and the
Fidelity had paid her husband in full--a hundred thousand or two!

"That's what's going on in the insurance world!" said Siegfried Harvey.

And that was the story which Montague took with him to add to his
enjoyment of the festivities at the country club. It was a very
gorgeous affair; but perhaps the sombreness of his thoughts was to
blame; the flowers and music and beautiful gowns