"Ham, you poisonous old reptile!" He seized the other's hand in his bony paw, prancing up and down, muttering incoherently.

"Sit down, my jolly old Captain. Let me take your overcoat. Well!

Well! Well! Give me your hat, dear old thing--dear old Captain, I mean. This is simply wonderful! This is one of the most amazin'

experiences I've ever had, my dear old sportsman and officer. How long have you been home? How did you leave the Territory? Good heavens!

We must have a bottle on this!"

"Sit down, you noisy devil," said Hamilton, pushing his erstwhile subordinate into a chair, and pulling up another to face him.

"So this is your boudoir!" He glanced round admiringly. "It looks rather like the waiting-room of a _couturiere_."

"My dear old thing," said the shocked Bones, "I beg you, if you please, remember, remember----" He lowered his voice, and the last word was in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, accompanied by many winks, nods, and pointings at and to a door which led from the inner office apparently to the outer.

"There's a person, dear old man of the world--a young person--well brought up----"

"What the----" began Hamilton.

"Don't be peeved!" Bones's knowledge of French was of the haziest.

"Remember, dear old thing," he said solemnly, wagging his inky forefinger, "as an employer of labour, I must protect the young an'

innocent, my jolly old skipper."

Hamilton looked round for a missile, and could find nothing better than a crystal paper-weight, which looked too valuable to risk.

"'_Couturiere_,'" he said acidly, "is French for 'dressmaker.'"

"French," said Bones, "is a language which I have always carefully avoided. I will say no more--you mean well, Ham."

Thereafter followed a volley of inquiries, punctuated at intervals by genial ceremony, for Bones would rise from his chair, walk solemnly round the desk, and as solemnly shake hands with his former superior.

"Now, Bones," said Hamilton at last, "will you tell me what you are doing?"

Bones shrugged his shoulders.

"Business," he said briefly. "A deal now and again, dear old officer.

Make a thousand or so one week, lose a hundred or so the next."

"But what are you doing?" persisted Hamilton.

Again Bones shrugged, but with more emphasis.

"I suppose," he confessed, with a show of self-deprecation which his smugness belied, "I suppose I am one of those jolly old spiders who sit in the centre of my web, or one of those perfectly d.i.n.ky little tigers who sit in my jolly old lair, waiting for victims.

"Of course, it's cruel sport"--he shrugged again, toying with his ivory paper-knife--"but one must live. In the City one preys upon other ones."

"Do the other ones do any preying at all?" asked Hamilton.

Up went Bones's eyebrows.

"They try," he said tersely, and with compressed lips. "Last week a fellow tried to sell me his gramophone, but I had a look at it. As I suspected, it had no needle. A gramophone without a needle," said Bones, "as you probably know, my dear old musical one, is wholly useless."

"But you can buy them at a bob a box," said Hamilton.

Bones's face fell.

"Can you really?" he demanded. "You are not pulling my leg, or anything? That's what the other fellow said. I do a little gambling,"

Bones went on, "not on the Stock Exchange or on the race-course, you understand, but in Exchanges."

"Money Exchanges?"

Bones bowed his head.

"For example," he said, "to-day a pound is worth thirty-two francs, to-morrow it is worth thirty-four francs. To-day a pound is worth four dollars seventy-seven----"

"As a matter of fact, it is three dollars ninety-seven," interrupted Hamilton.

"Ninety-seven or seventy-seven," said Bones irritably, "what is four shillings to men like you or me, Hamilton? We can well afford it."

"My dear chap," said Hamilton, pardonably annoyed, "there is a difference of four shillings between your estimate and the rate."

"What is four shillings to you or me?" asked Bones again, shaking his head solemnly. "My dear old Ham, don't be mean."

There was a discreet tap on the door, and Bones rose with every evidence of agitation.

"Don't stir, dear old thing," he pleaded in a husky whisper. "Pretend not to notice, dear old Ham. Don't be nervous--wonderful young lady----"

Then, clearing his throat noisily, "Come in!" he roared in the tone that a hungry lion might have applied to one of the early Christian martyrs who was knocking by mistake on the door of his den.

In spite of all injunctions, Hamilton did look, and he did stare, and he did take a great deal of notice, for the girl who came in was well worth looking at. He judged her to be about the age of twenty-one.

"Pretty" would be too feeble a word to employ in describing her. The russet-brown hair, dressed low over her forehead, emphasized the loveliness of eyes set wide apart and holding in their clear depths all the magic and mystery of womanhood.

She was dressed neatly. He observed, too, that she had an open book under her arm and a pencil in her hand, and it dawned upon him slowly that this radiant creature was--Bones's secretary!

Bones's secretary!

He stared at Bones, and that young man, very red in the face, avoided his eye.

Bones was standing by the desk, in the att.i.tude of an after-dinner speaker who was stuck for the right word. In moments of extreme agitation Bones's voice became either a growl or a squeak--the bottom register was now in exercise.

"Did--did you want me, young miss?" he demanded gruffly.

The girl at the door hesitated.

"I'm sorry--I didn't know you were engaged. I wanted to see you about the Abyssinian----"

"Come in, come in, certainly," said Bones more gruffly than ever. "A new complication, young miss?"

She laid a paper on the desk, taking no more notice of Hamilton than if he were an ornament on the chimney-piece.

"The first instalment of the purchase price is due to-day," she said.

"Is it?" said Bones, with his extravagant surprise. "Are you certain, young miss? This day of all days--and it's a Thursday, too," he added unnecessarily.