ook at it," said Bones, and Mr. Hyane, with a smile,
took it from his pocket and handed it to the other.

"Half for you and half for her, eh, dear old thing?" said Bones, and
tore the cheque in two. "That's your half," he said, handing one
portion to Mr. Hyane.

"What the devil are you doing?" demanded the other angrily, but Bones
had him by the collar, and was kicking him along the all-too-short
corridor.

"Open the door, Ali!" said Bones. "Open it wide, dear old heathen!
Ooff!"

The "Ooff!" was accompanied by one final lunge of Bones's long legs.

At midnight Bones was sitting on the platform at King's Cross,
alternately smoking a large pipe and singing tuneless songs. They told
him that the next train from York would not arrive until three in the
morning.

"That doesn't worry me, old thing. I'll wait all night."

"Expecting somebody, sir?" asked the inquisitive porter.

"Everybody, my dear old uniformed official," said Bones, "everybody!"

CHAPTER XII

BONES HITS BACK

It may be said of Bones that he was in the City, but not of it. Never
once had he been invited by the great and awe-inspiring men who
dominate the finance of the City to participate in any of those
adventurous undertakings which produce for the adventurers the fabulous
profits about which so much has been written. There were times when
Bones even doubted whether the City knew he was in it.

He never realised his own insignificance so poignantly as when he
strolled through the City streets at their busiest hour, and was
unrecognised even by the bareheaded clerks who dashed madly in all
directions, carrying papers of tremendous importance.

The indifference of the City to Mr. Tibbetts and his partner was more
apparent than real. It is true that the great men who sit around the
green baize cloth at the Bank of England and arrange the bank rate knew
not Bones nor his work. It is equally true that the very important
personages who occupy suites of rooms in Lombard Street had little or
no idea of his existence. But there were men, and rich and famous men
at that, who had inscribed the name of Bones in indelible ink on the
tablets of their memory.

The Pole Brothers were shipbrokers, and had little in common, in their
daily transactions, with Mr. Harold de Vinne, who specialised in
industrial stocks, and knew little more about ships than could be
learnt in an annual holiday trip to Madeira. Practically there was no
bridge to