n unfathomable smile upon his face, and his red
beard and towsy hair seemed to bristle from some internal excitement.

"Very rich! Ho, ho! Very rich!" he laughed. "I know dem; not as
friends, Gott bewahre! but I know dem and their affairs."

"What are you driving at? Let's have it. Out with it, man."

"I tell you," said the German, suddenly becoming supernaturally solemn
and sawing his hand up and down in the air to emphasize his remarks,
"in tree or four months, or a year at the most, there vill be no firm of
Girdlestone. They are rotten, useless--whoo! He blew an imaginary
feather up into the air to demonstrate the extreme fragility of the
house in question.

"You're raving, Baumser," said Major Clutterbuck excitedly. "Why, man,
their names are above suspicion. They are looked upon as the soundest
concern in the City."

"Dat may be; dat may be," the German answered stolidly. "Vat I know, I
know, and vat I say I say."

"And how d'ye know it? D'ye tell me that you know lore about it than
the men on 'Change and the firms that do business with them?"

"I know vat I know, and I say vat I say," the other repeated.
"Dat tobacco-man Burger is a rogue. Dere is five-and-thirty in the
hundred of water in this canaster tobacco, and one must be for ever
relighting."

"And you won't tell me where you heard this of the Girdlestones?"

"It vould be no good to you. It Is enough dat vat I say is certain.
Let it suffice that dere are people vat are bound to tell other people
all dat dey know about anything whatever."

"You don't make it over clear now," the old soldier grumbled. "You mane
that these secret societies and Socialists let each other know all that
comes in their way and have their own means of getting information."

"Dat may be, and dat may not be," the German answered, in the same
oracular voice. "I thought, in any case, my good friend Clutterbuck,
dat I vould give you vat you call in English the straight tap. It is
always vell to have the straight tap."

"Thank ye, me boy," the major said heartily. "If the firm's in a bad
way, either the youngster doesn't know of it, or else he's the most
natural actor that ever lived. Be George! there's the tay-bell; let's
get down before the bread and butther is all finished."

Mrs. Robbins was in the habit of furnishing her lodgers with an evening
meal at a small sum per head. There was only a certain amount of bread
and butter supplied for this, however