pended
rather on his fine optimism than on any examination of the mine. As a
matter of fact, he never went near it. And why should he? It's down in
South America somewhere. Awful climate--snakes, mosquitoes, revolutions,
fever."

Mr. Windlebird spoke drowsily. His eyes closed.

"Well, the Argus people say that they have sent a man of their own out
there to make inquiries, a well-known expert, and the report will be in
within the next fortnight. They say they will publish it in their next
number but one. What are you going to do about it?"

Mr. Windlebird yawned.

"Not to put too fine a point on it, dearest, the game is up. The
Napoleon of Finance is about to meet his Waterloo. And all for twenty
thousand pounds. That is the really bitter part of it. To-morrow we sail
for the Argentine. I've got the tickets."

"You're joking, Geoffrey. You must be able to raise twenty thousand.
It's a flea-bite."

"On paper--in the form of shares, script, bonds, promissory notes, it
is a flea-bite. But when it has to be produced in the raw, in flat, hard
lumps of gold or in crackling bank-notes, it's more like a bite from a
hippopotamus. I can't raise it, and that's all about it. So--St. Helena
for Napoleon."

Altho Geoffrey Windlebird described himself as a Napoleon of Finance, a
Cinquevalli or Chung Ling Soo of Finance would have been a more accurate
title. As a juggler with other people's money he was at the head of his
class. And yet, when one came to examine it, his method was delightfully
simple. Say, for instance, that the Home-grown Tobacco Trust, founded by
Geoffrey in a moment of ennui, failed to yield those profits which the
glowing prospectus had led the public to expect. Geoffrey would appease
the excited shareholders by giving them Preference Shares (interest
guaranteed) in the Sea-gold Extraction Company, hastily floated to meet
the emergency. When the interest became due, it would, as likely as not,
be paid out of the capital just subscribed for the King Solomon's Mines
Exploitation Association, the little deficiency in the latter being
replaced in its turn, when absolutely necessary and not a moment before,
by the transfer of some portion of the capital just raised for yet
another company. And so on, ad infinitum. There were moments when it
seemed to Mr. Windlebird that he had solved the problem of Perpetual
Promotion.

The only thing that can stop a triumphal progress like Mr. Windlebird's
is when some coarse