Seated with his wife at breakfast on the veranda which overlooked the rolling lawns and leafy woods of his charming Sussex home, Geoffrey Windlebird, the great financier, was enjoying the morning sun to the full. His chubby features were relaxed in a smile of lazy contentment; and his wife, who liked to act sometimes as his secretary, found it difficult to get him to pay any attention to his morning’s mail.
“There’s a column in to-day’sFinancial Argus,” she said, “of which you really must take notice. It’s most abusive. It’s about the Wildcat Reef. They assert that there never was any gold in the mine, and that you knew it when you floated the company.”
“They will have their little joke.”
“But you had the usual mining-expert’s report.”
“Of course we had. And a capital report it was. I remember thinking at the time what a neat turn of phrase the fellow had. I
