haired brother of hers had come very often during the past
half-year to the little book-shop, and the widow's home above it, his
misshapen handbag full of papers, his heart full of rage, hope, grief,
ambition, disgust, confidence--everything but despair. It was true, it
had never been quite real to her. He was right in his suggestion that
she had never wholly believed in him. She had not been able to take
altogether seriously this clumsy, careworn, shabbily-dressed man who
talked about millions. It was true that he had sent her four hundred
pounds for the education of her son and daughter; it was equally true
that he had brought with him to London a sum which any of his ancestors,
so far as she knew about them, would have deemed a fortune, and which he
treated as merely so much oil, with which to lubricate the machinery of
his great enterprise. She had heard, at various times, the embittered
details of the disappearance of this money, little by little. Nearly a
quarter of it, all told, had been appropriated by a sleek old braggart
of a company-promoter, who had cozened Joel into the belief that London
could be best approached through him. When at last this wretch was
kicked downstairs, the effect had been only to make room for a fresh
lot of bloodsuckers. There were so-called advertising agents, so-called
journalists, so-called "men of influence in the City,"--a swarm of
relentless and voracious harpies, who dragged from him in blackmail
nearly the half of what he had left, before he summoned the courage and
decision to shut them out.

Worse still, in some ways, were the men into whose hands he stumbled
next--a group of City men concerned in the South African market, who
impressed him very favourably at the outset. He got to know them by
accident, and at the time when he began to comprehend the necessity of
securing influential support for his scheme. Everything that he heard
and could learn about them testified to the strength of their position
in the City. Because they displayed a certain amiability of manner
toward him and his project, he allowed himself to make sure of their
support. It grew to be a certainty in his mind that they would see him
through. He spent a good deal of money in dinners and suppers in their
honour, after they had let him understand that this form of propitiation
was not unpleasant to them. They chaffed him about some newspaper
paragraphs, in which he was described as the "Rubber King," with
a