flies on ’im.”

“Not many,” Gerald owned with modest pride. “Cut along, there’s a good chap. I’ve got to wait here. I’ll take care of your bag if you like.”

“Nor yet there ain’t no flies on me neither,” remarked the boy, shouldering it. “I been up to the confidence trick for years—ever since I was your age.”

With this parting shot he went; and returned in due course bun-laden. Gerald gave the sixpence and took the buns. When the boy, a minute later, emerged from the door of Mr. U. W Ugli, Stock and Share Broker (and at the Stock Exchange), Gerald stopped him.

“What sort of chap’s that?” he asked, pointing the question with a jerk of an explaining thumb.

“Awful big pot,”ei said the boy; “up to his eyes in oof.ej Motor and all that.”

“Know anything about the one on the next landing?”

“He’s bigger than what this one is. Very old firm—special cellar in the Bank of England to put his chink in—all in bins like against the wall at the corn-chandler’s. Jimminy, I wouldn’t mind ’alf an hour in there, and the doors open and the police away at a beano.ek Not much! Neither. You’ll bust if you eat all them buns.”

“Have one?” Gerald responded, and held out the bag.

“They say in our office,” said the boy, paying for the bun honourably with unasked information, “as these two is all for cutting each other’s throats—oh, only in the way of business—been at it for years.

Gerald wildly wondered what magic and how much had been needed to give history and a past to these two things of yesterday, the rich Jimmy and the Ugly-Wugly. If he could get them away would all memory of them fade—in this boy’s mind, for instance, in the minds of all the people who did business with them in the City? Would the mahogany-and-clerk-furnished offices fade away? Were the clerks real? Was the mahogany? Was he himself real? Was the boy?

“Can you keep a secret?” he asked the other boy. “Are you on for a lark?”

“I ought to be getting back to the office,” said the boy.

“Get then!” said Gerald.

“Don’t you get stuffy,” said the boy. “I was just a-going to say it didn’t matter. I know how to make my nose bleed if I’m a bit late.”

Gerald congratulated him on this accomplishment, at once so useful and so graceful, and then said:

“Look here. I’ll give you five bobel—honest.”

“What for?” was the boy’s natural question.

“If you’ll help me.”

“Fire ahead.”

“I’m a private inquiry,” said Gerald.

“Tec? You don’t look it.”

“What’s the good of being one if you look it?” Gerald asked impatiently, beginning on another bun. “That old chap on the floor above—he’s wanted.”

“Police?” asked the boy with fine carelessness.

“No—sorrowing relations.”

“ ‘Return to,’ ” said the boy; “ ‘all forgotten and forgiven.’ I see.”

“And I’ve got to get him to them, somehow. Now, if you could go in and give him a message from someone who wanted to meet him on business—”

“Hold on!” said the boy. “I know a trick worth two of that. You go in and see old Ugli. He’d give his ears to have the old boy out of the way for a day or two. They were saying so in our office only this morning.”

“Let me think,” said Gerald, laying down the last bun on his knee expressly to hold his head in his hands.

“Don’t you forget to think about my five bob,” said the boy.

Then there was a silence on the stairs, broken only by the cough of a clerk in That’s office, and the clickety-clack of a typewriter in the office of Mr. U.W. Ugli.

Then Gerald rose up and finished the bun.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’ll chance it. Here’s your five bob.”

He brushed the bun crumbs from his front, cleared his throat, and knocked at the door of Mr. U. W Ugli. It opened and he entered.

The door-mat boy lingered, secure in his power to account for his long absence by means of his well-trained nose, and his waiting was rewarded. He went down a few steps, round the bend of the stairs, and heard the voice of Mr. U. W Ugli, so well known on that staircase (and on the Stock Exchange) say in soft, cautious accents:

“Then I’ll ask him to let me look at the ring—and I’ll drop it.You pick it up. But remember, it’s a pure accident, and you don’t know me. I can’t have my name mixed up in a thing like this. You’re sure he’s really unhinged?”

“Quite,” said