"Don't pry, don't pry, dear old Ham," he said testily. "Great Heavens
and Moses! Can't a fellow take a desirable flat, with all modern
conveniences, in the most fashionable part of the West End, and all
that sort of thing, without exciting the voice of scandal, dear old
thing? I'm surprised at you, really I am, Ham. I am, Ham," he
repeated. "That sounds good," he said, brightening up. "Am Ham!"
"But what is the scheme?" persisted Hamilton.
"A bargain, a bargain, dear old officer," said Bones, hurriedly, and
proceeded to the next business.
That next business included the rejection of several very promising
offers which had arrived from different directors of companies, and
people. Bones was known as a financier. People who wanted other
people to put money into things invariably left Bones to the last,
because they liked trying the hard things first. The inventor and
patentee of the reaping machine that could be worked by the farmer in
his study, by means of push keys, was sure, sooner or later, to meet a
man who scratched his chin and said: "Hard luck, but why don't you try that man Tibbetts? He's got an
office somewhere around. You'll find it in the telephone book. He's
got more money than he knows what to do with, and your invention is the
very thing he'd finance."
As a rule, it was the very thing that Bones did not finance.
Companies that required ten thousand pounds for the extension of their
premises, and the fulfilment of the orders which were certain to come
next year, drafted through their secretaries the most wonderful
letters, offering Bones a seat on their board, or even two seats, in
exchange for his autograph on the south-east corner of a cheque. These
letters usually began somehow like this: "At a moment when the eyes of the world are turned upon Great Britain,
and when her commercial supremacy is threatened, it behoves us all to
increase production...." And usually there was some reference to "the
patriotic duty of capital."
There was a time when these appeals to his better nature would have
moved Bones to amazing extravagance, but happily that time was before
he had any money to speak about.
For Bones was growing in wisdom and in wiliness as the days passed.
Going through the pile of correspondence, he came upon a letter which
he read thoughtfully, and then read again before he reached to the
telephone and called a number. In the City of London there was a
business-like agency which supplied him with a great deal of useful
information, and it was to these gentlemen that he addressed his query:
"Who are Messrs. Seepidge & Soomes?"
He waited for some time with the receiver at his ear, a far-away look
in his eyes, and then the reply came: "A little firm of printers run by a rascal named Seepidge, who has been
twice bankrupt and is now insolvent. His firm has been visited by the
police for illegal printing several times, and the firm is in such a
low condition that it has a job to pay its wages bill."