His mother had been a Miss Whitland, his father was the notorious
Colonel Hyane, who boasted that his library was papered with High Court
writs, and who had had the distinction of being escorted from Monte
Carlo by the police of the Principality.

Mr. Jackson Hyane was a student of men and affairs. Very little
escaped his keen observation, and he had a trick of pigeon-holing
possibilities of profit, and forgetting them until the moment seemed
ripe for their exploitation. He was tall and handsome, with a smile
which was worth at least five thousand pounds a year to him, for it
advertised his boyish innocence and enthusiasm--he who had never been
either a boy or enthusiastic.

One grey October day he put away his pass-book into a drawer and locked
it, and took from a mental pigeon-hole the materials of an immature
scheme. He dressed himself soberly and well, strolled down into
Piccadilly, and calling a cab, drove to the block of City buildings
which housed the flourishing business of Tibbetts and Hamilton, Limited.

The preliminaries to this invasion had been very carefully settled. He
had met Miss Marguerite Whitland by "accident" a week before, had
called at her lodgings with an old photograph of her father, which he
had providentially discovered, and had secured from her a somewhat
reluctant acceptance of an invitation to lunch.

Bones looked up from his desk as the debonair young man strolled in.

"You don't know me, Mr. Tibbetts," said Jackson Hyane, flashing his
famous smile. "My name is Hyane."

It was his first meeting with Bones, but by no means the first time
that Jackson had seen him.

"My dear old Hyane, sit down," said Bones cheerfully. "What can we do
for you?"

Mr. Hyane laughed.

"There's nothing you can do for me, except to spare your secretary for
an hour longer than she usually takes."

"My secretary?" said Bones quickly, and shot a suspicious glance at the
visitor.

"I mean Miss Whitland," said Hyane easily. "She is my cousin, you
know. My mother's brother was her father."

"Oh, yes," said Bones a little stiffly.

He felt a sense of the strongest resentment against the late Professor
Whitland. He felt that Marguerite's father had played rather a low
trick on him in having a sister at all, and Mr. Hyane was too keen a
student to overlook Bones's obvious annoyance.

"Yes," he went on carelessly, "we are quite old friends, Marguerite and
I, and you can't imagine how pleased I am