164
XX. The Family Council 179
XXI. Hoover's 200
XXII. An Interlude 212
XXIII. Smithers 222
XXIV. He Runs to Earth 230
XXV. Moths 234
XXVI. A Tramp, and Other Things 241
XXVII. The Only Man in the World Who Would Believe Him 264
XXVIII. Pebblemarsh 274
XXIX. The Blighted City 283
XXX. A Just Man Angered 289
XXXI. He Finds Himself 294

THE MAN WHO LOST HIMSELF

PART I

CHAPTER I

JONES

It was the first of June, and Victor Jones of Philadelphia was seated in
the lounge of the Savoy Hotel, London, defeated in his first really
great battle with the thing we call life.

Though of Philadelphia, Jones was not an American, nor had he anything
of the American accent. Australian born, he had started life in a bank
at Melbourne, gone to India for a trading house, started for himself,
failed, and become a rolling stone. Philadelphia was his last halt.

With no financial foundation, Victor and a Philadelphia gentleman had
competed for a contract to supply the British Government with Harveyised
steel struts, bolts, and girders; he had come over to London to press
the business; he had interviewed men in brass hats, slow moving men who
had turned him over to slower moving men. The Stringer Company, for so
he dubbed himself and Aaron Stringer, who had financed him for the
journey, had wasted three weeks on the business, and this morning their
tender had been rejected. Hardmans', the Pittsburg people, had got the
order.

It was a nasty blow. If he and Stringer could have secured the contract,
they could have carried it through all right, Stringer would have put
the thing in the hands of Laurenson of Philadelphia, and their
commission would have been enormous, a stroke of the British
Government's pen would have filled their pockets; failing that they were
bankrupt. At least Jones was.

And justifiably you will say, considering that the whole business was a
gigantic piece of bluff--well, maybe, yet on beh