claimed. "_You_, the Chairman of the company!
_You_ deserted the ship! And how about your trust? How about the widows
and orphans confided to you?"

Charles rose and faced me. "Seymour Wentworth," he said, in his most
solemn voice, "you have lived with me for years and had every
advantage. You have seen high finance. Yet you ask me that question!
It's my belief you will never, never understand business!"

VII

THE EPISODE OF THE ARREST OF THE COLONEL

How much precisely Charles dropped over the slump in Cloetedorps
I never quite knew. But the incident left him dejected, limp, and
dispirited.

"Hang it all, Sey," he said to me in the smoking-room, a few
evenings later. "This Colonel Clay is enough to vex the patience of
Job--and Job had large losses, too, if I recollect aright, from the
Chaldeans and other big operators of the period."

"Three thousand camels," I murmured, recalling my dear mother's
lessons; "all at one fell swoop; not to mention five hundred yoke of
oxen, carried off by the Sabeans, then a leading firm of speculative
cattle-dealers!"

"Ah, well," Charles meditated aloud, shaking the ash from his
cheroot into a Japanese tray--fine antique bronze-work. "There were
big transactions in live-stock even then! Still, Job or no Job, the
man is too much for me."

"The difficulty is," I assented, "you never know where to have him."

"Yes," Charles mused; "if he were always the same, like Horniman's
tea or a good brand of whisky, it would be easier, of course; you'd
stand some chance of spotting him. But when a man turns up smiling
every time in a different disguise, which fits him like a skin, and
always apparently with the best credentials, why, hang it all, Sey,
there's no wrestling with him anyhow."

"Who could have come to us, for example, better vouched," I
acquiesced, "than the Honourable David?"

"Exactly so," Charles murmured. "I invited him myself, for my own
advantage. And he arrived with all the prestige of the Glen-Ellachie
connection."

"Or the Professor?" I went on. "Introduced to us by the leading
mineralogist of England."

I had touched a sore point. Charles winced and remained silent.

"Then, women again," he resumed, after a painful pause. "I must meet
in society many charming women. I can't everywhere and always be on
my guard against every dear soul of them. Yet the moment I relax
my attention for one day--or even when I don't relax it--I am
bamboozled and led a dan