"I don't know what it is," Dauncey confessed. "The agreement seems all
right, but I saw their faces when I let 'em out. I can't see the flaw,
Jacob, but it's not an honest deal. They've got something up their
sleeve."

Jacob smiled.

"Perhaps you're right, Dick," he answered. "Anyway, lock the agreement
up in the safe and don't worry."

CHAPTER VII

Jacob found life, for the next few months, an easy and a pleasant
thing. He took a prolonged summer holiday and made many acquaintances
at a fashionable French watering place, where he devoted more time
to golf than gambling, but made something of a reputation at both
pursuits. He came back to London bronzed and in excellent health, but
always with a curious sense of something wanting in his life, an
emptiness of purpose, which he could never altogether shake off. He
was a liberal patron of the theatres, but he had no inclinations
towards theatrical society, or the easy Bohemian circles amongst
which he would have been such a welcome disciple. He was brought
into contact with a certain number of wealthy men in the city, who
occasionally asked him to their homes, but here again he was conscious
of disappointment. He enjoyed wine, cigars and good food, but he
required with them the leaven of good company and good fellowship,
which somehow or other seemed to evade him. Dauncey remained his chief
and most acceptable companion, a rejuvenated Dauncey, who had
developed a dry fund of humour, a brightness of eye and speech wholly
transforming. There were many others who offered him friendship, but
Jacob's natural shrewdness seemed only to have increased with his
access of prosperity, and he became almost morbidly conscious of the
attractions to others of his ever-growing wealth. He had joined a
club of moderate standing, where he met a certain number of men with
whom he was at times content to exchange amenities. He had a very
comfortable flat in the Milan Court, a country cottage at Marlingden,
now his own property, with a largely increased rose garden, and half
an acre of forcing houses, over which domain Mr. and Mrs. Harris
reigned supreme. He possessed a two-seater Rolls-Royce, which was the
envy of all his acquaintances, and a closed car of the same make. He
belonged to a very good golf club near London, where he usually spent
his week-ends, and his handicap was rapidly diminishing. And he had
managed to preserve entirely his bland simplicity of manner. Not a
s