You understand the Coast customs better than I do.
Trading customs hold without endorsement from the Colonial Office."

Bones had to admit that that was a fact.

"I'll think it over," he said. "It appeals to me, old de Vinne. It
really does appeal to me. Who own the shares?"

"I can give you a list," said Mr. de Vinne, with admirable calm, "and
you'd be well advised to negotiate privately with these gentlemen.
You'd probably get the shares for eighteen shillings." He took a gold
pencil from his pocket and wrote rapidly a list of names, and Bones
took the paper from his hand and scrutinised them.

Hamilton, a silent and an amazed spectator of the proceedings, waited
until de Vinne had gone, and then fell upon his partner.

"You're not going to be such a perfect jackass----" he began, but
Bones's dignified gesture arrested his eloquence.

"Dear old Ham," he said, "senior partner, dear old thing! Let old
Bones have his joke."

"Do you realise," said Hamilton, "that you are contemplating the risk
of a quarter of a million? You're mad, Bones!"

Bones grinned.

"Go down to our broker and buy ten thousand shares in old Mazeppa,
Ham," he said. "You'll buy them on the market for nineteen shillings,
and I've an idea that they're worth about the nineteenth part of a
farthing."

"But----" stammered Hamilton.

"It is an order," said Bones, and he spoke in the Bomongo tongue.

"Phew!" said Hamilton. "That carries me a few thousand miles. I
wonder what those devils of the N'gombi are doing now?"

"I'll tell you something they're not doing," said Bones. "They're not
buying Mazeppa shares."

There were two very deeply troubled people in the office of Tibbetts
and Hamilton. One was Hamilton himself, and the other was Miss
Marguerite Whitland. Hamilton had two causes for worry. The first and
the least was the strange extravagance of Bones. The second--and this
was more serious--was the prospect of breaking to Sanders that night
that he had been swindled, for swindled he undoubtedly was. Hamilton
had spent a feverish hour canvassing City opinion on the Mazeppa
Trading Company, and the report he had had was not encouraging. He
had, much against his will, carried out the instructions of Bones, and
had purchased in the open market ten thousand shares in the Company--a
transaction duly noted by Mr. de Vinne and his interested partner.

"He is biting," said that exultant man over the 'phone. "All we have
to