" the Marquis repeated. "You are the first person,
Mr. Pratt, to whom this--er--enterprise has been suggested, who has
seen through our little financial effort."

Jacob was somewhat staggered. He looked across at Montague.

"You're on top again, Pratt," that gentleman conceded gloomily. "The
music hall in question is the Shoreditch 'Empress.'"

"And do you mean to say," Jacob demanded incredulously, "that you have
induced the people whose names are on that list to part with their
money, believing they are going to acquire an interest in the Empress
Music Hall in Leicester Square?"

"That's all right," Montague assented. "It was dead easy. You see,
they were mostly the Marquis's friends, toffs, without any head for
business, and we swore them to absolute secrecy--told them if they
breathed a word of it, the whole thing would be spoilt."

"But you aren't giving fifty thousand pounds for the Shoreditch
Empress?"

The financier laughed scornfully.

"Not likely! That's where the Marquis and I make a bit. We have
another agreement with Peter, who's a pal and a white man, to buy the
place for fifteen thousand. Then we've an arrangement--"

"You needn't go on," Jacob interrupted. "I can quite see that there
are plenty of ways of working the swindle."

"Swindle?" his host repeated, with a pained expression. "My dear Mr.
Pratt!"

"Why, what else can you call it?" Jacob protested.

The Marquis coughed.

"It is only lately," he said, "that, with the assistance of Mr. Dane
Montague, I have endeavoured to supplement my income in this fashion.
I do not understand the harshness of your term, Mr. Pratt, as applied
to this transaction. I have little experience of city life, but I have
always understood that money was made there, in financial and Stock
Exchange circles, by buying from a man something which you knew was
worth more money, selling it to another and--er--pocketing the
difference. Surely this involves a certain amount of what a purist
would call deceit?"

"On the contrary," Jacob pointed out, "that is a fair bargain, because
the two men have different ideas of the value of a thing, and each
backs his own opinion."

"But there are surely many cases," the Marquis argued, "in which the
seller knows and the buyer does not know? Is it incumbent on the
seller to impart to the buyer his superior knowledge? I think not.
Without a doubt, business in the city is conducted on the general
lines of the man knowing the mo