never heard of your
case," he said. "He must have got the best of you in the early days."

Mr. Fred nodded.

"I was his first"--he swallowed hard and added--"mug!"

Mr. de Vinne pulled thoughtfully at his black cigar and eyed the
ceiling of the restaurant absent-mindedly.

"There's nobody in the City who knows more about Tibbetts than me," he
said. He was weak on the classical side, but rather strong on
mathematics. "I've watched every transaction he's been in, and I think
I have got him down fine."

"Mind you," said Fred, "I think he's clever."

"Clever!" said the other scornfully. "Clever! He's lucky, my dear
chap. Things have just fallen into his lap. It's mug's luck that man
has had."

Mr. Fred nodded. It was an opinion which he himself had held and
ruminated upon.

"It is luck--sheer luck," continued Mr. de Vinne. "And if we'd been
clever, we'd have cleaned him. We'll clean him yet," he said, stroking
his chin more thoughtfully than ever, "but it's got to be done
systematically."

Mr. Fred was interested. The possibility of relieving a
fellow-creature of his superfluous wealth by legitimate means, and
under the laws and rules which govern the legal transfer of property,
was the absorbing interest of his life.

"It has got to be done cleverly, scientifically, and systematically,"
said Mr. de Vinne, "and there's no sense in jumping to a plan. What do
you say to taking a bit of dinner with me at the Ritz-Carlton on
Friday?"

Mr. Fred was very agreeable.

"I'll tell you the strength of Bones," said de Vinne, as they left the
restaurant. "He was an officer on the West Coast of Africa. His boss
was a man named Sanders, who's left the Service and lives at
Twickenham. From what I can hear, this chap Tibbetts worships the
ground that Sanders walks on. Evidently Sanders was a big bug in West
Africa."

On Friday they resumed their conversation, and Mr. de Vinne arrived
with a plan. It was a good plan. He was tremulous with pride at the
thought of it, and demanded applause and approval with every second
breath, which was unlike him.

He was a man of many companies, good, bad, and indifferent, and,
reviewing the enterprises with which his name was associated, he had,
without the slightest difficulty, placed his finger upon the least
profitable and certainly the most hopeless proposition in the Mazeppa
Trading Company. And nothing could be better for Mr. de Vinne's
purpose, not, as he exp