m, have been in progress for a month," he
recited. "I have been taking lessons on the quiet, and to-day--proof!"
He took out his pocket-book and threw a paper with a lordly air towards
his partner. It fell half-way on the floor.

"Don't trouble to get up," said Hamilton. "It's your motor licence.
You needn't be able to drive a car to get that."

And then Bones dropped his attitude of insouciance and became a
vociferous advertisement for the six-cylinder Carter-Crispley ("the big
car that's made like a clock"). He became double pages with
illustrations and handbooks and electric signs. He spoke of Carter and
of Crispley individually and collectively with enthusiasm, affection,
and reverence.

"Oh!" said Hamilton, when he had finished. "It sounds good."

"Sounds good!" scoffed Bones. "Dear old sceptical one, that car..."

And so forth.

All excesses being their own punishment, two days later Bones renewed
an undesirable acquaintance. In the early days of Schemes, Ltd., Mr.
Augustus Tibbetts had purchased a small weekly newspaper called the
_Flame_. Apart from the losses he incurred during its short career,
the experience was made remarkable by the fact that he became
acquainted with Mr. Jelf, a young and immensely self-satisfied man in
pince-nez, who habitually spoke uncharitably of bishops, and never
referred to members of the Government without causing sensitive people
to shudder.

The members of the Government retaliated by never speaking of Jelf at
all, so there was probably some purely private feud between them.

Jelf disapproved of everything. He was twenty-four years of age, and
he, too, had made the acquaintance of the Hindenburg Line. Naturally
Bones thought of Jelf when he purchased the _Flame_.

From the first Bones had run the _Flame_ with the object of exposing
things. He exposed Germans, Swedes, and Turks--which was safe. He
exposed a furniture dealer who had made him pay twice for an article
because a receipt was lost, and that cost money. He exposed a man who
had been very rude to him in the City. He would have exposed James
Jacobus Jelf, only that individual showed such eagerness to expose his
own shortcomings, at a guinea a column, that Bones had lost interest.

His stock of personal grievances being exhausted, he had gone in for a
general line of exposure which embraced members of the aristocracy and
the Stock Exchange.

If Bones did not like a man's face, he exposed him. He