I

The kite wheeling invisible in the blue heavens, the vulture appearing

mysteriously from nowhere in the track of the staggering buck, possess

qualities which are shared by certain favoured human beings. No

newspaper announced the fact that there had arrived in the City of

London a young man tremendously wealthy and as tremendously

inexperienced.

There were no meetings of organized robber gangs, where masked men laid

nefarious plans and plots, but the instinct which called the kite to

his quarry and the carrion to the kill brought many strangers--who were

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equally strange to Bones and to one another--to the beautiful office

which he had fitted for himself for the better furtherance of his

business.

One day a respectable man brought to Mr. Tibbetts a plan of a

warehouse. He came like a gale of wind, almost before Bones had

digested the name on the card which announced his existence and

identity.

His visitor was red-faced and big, and had need to use a handkerchief

to mop his brow and neck at intervals of every few minutes. His

geniality was overpowering.

Before the startled Bones could ask his business, he had put his hat

upon one chair, hooked his umbrella on another, and was unrolling, with

that professional tremblement of hand peculiar to all who unroll large

stiff sheets of paper, a large coloured plan, a greater portion of

which was taken up by the River Thames, as Bones saw at a glance.

He knew that blue stood for water, and, twisting his neck, he read

"Thames." He therefore gathered that this was the plan of a property

adjacent to the London river.

"You're a busy man; and I'm a busy man," said the stentorian man

breathlessly. "I've just bought this property, and if it doesn't

interest you I'll eat my hat! My motto is small profits and quick

returns. Keep your money at work, and you won't have to. Do you see

what I mean?"

"Dear old hurricane," said Bones feebly, "this is awfully interesting,

and all that sort of thing, but would you be so kind as to explain why

and where--why you came in in this perfectly informal manner? Against

all the rules of my office, dear old thing, if you don't mind me

snubbing you a bit. You are sure you aren't hurt?" he asked.

"Not a bit, not a bit!" bellowed the intruder. "Honest John, I

am--John Staines. You have heard of me?"

"I have," said Bones, and the visitor was so surprised that he showed

it.

"You have?" he said, not without a hint of incredulity.




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