ew
of this aspect of things. So he was interested when Mrs. Smythe
remarked that among his fellow-guests was Vandam, an official of one of
the great life-insurance companies. "Freddie" Vandam, as the lady
called him, was a man of might in the financial world; and Montague
said to himself that in meeting him he would really be accomplishing
something. Crack shots and polo-players and four-in-hand experts were
all very well, but he had his living to earn, and he feared that the
problem was going to prove complicated.

So he was glad when chance brought him and young Vandam together, and
Siegfried Harvey introduced them. And then Montague got the biggest
shock which New York had given him yet.

It was not what Freddie Vandam said; doubtless he had a right to be
interested in the Horse Show, since he was to exhibit many fine horses,
and he had no reason to feel called upon to talk about anything more
serious to a stranger at a house party. But it was the manner of the
man, his whole personality. For Freddie was a man of fashion, with all
the exaggerated and farcical mannerisms of the dandy of the comic
papers. He wore a conspicuous and foppish costume, and posed with a
little cane; he cultivated a waving pompadour, and his silky moustache
and beard were carefully trimmed to points, and kept sharp by his
active fingers. His conversation was full of French phrases and French
opinions; he had been reared abroad, and had a whole-souled contempt
for all things American-even dictating his business letters in French,
and leaving it for his stenographer to translate them. His shirts were
embroidered with violets and perfumed with violets--and there were
bunches of violets at his horses' heads, so that he might get the odour
as he drove!

There was a cruel saying about Freddie Vandam--that if only he had had
a little more brains, he would have been half-witted. And Montague sat,
and watched his mannerisms and listened to his inanities, with his mind
in a state of bewilderment and dismay. When at last he got up and
walked away, it was with a new sense of the complicated nature of the
problem that confronted him. Who was there that could give him the key
to this mystery--who could interpret to him a world in which a man such
as this was in control of four or five hundred millions of trust funds?

CHAPTER VII

It was quite futile to attempt to induce anyone to talk about serious
matters just now--for the coming week all S