“Come to get another speech, Fred?” Christopher looked up cheerily from the work before him. The sweet spring season, when the big dinners are going on, is his time of harvest, and after June he can send his sheaves of golden grain to the Bank. It promised to be a busy and a prosperous season. “Come for another speech, old man?” he repeated. “I’m doing a humorous one on Literature, but I can make room for you.”

“Hang your speeches!” Fred sat down on the table. “You might offer a man a drink.” He spoke as one oppressed with a sense of injustice.

“Seem out of sorts, Fred. What’s gone wrong? Colonial Enterprise? The great concern which interests all Lombard Street hitched up somehow?” He asked with the exasperating grin of the doubter. But he opened a cupboard and produced a bottle, a glass, and two or three sodas. “Well, old man, there’s your drink.”

Fred grunted, helped himself liberally, though it was as yet only eleven in the forenoon.

“The great Colonial concern is where it was,” he explained vaguely.

“So I supposed. And about Lombard Street?”

“Well, I thought better of the City. I thought there was still some enterprise left in this rotten, stagnant, decaying, and declining old country.”

Christopher laughed.

“They won’t look at it, eh?”

“On the contrary, they won’t do anything till they have looked at it.”

“Humph! Awkward, isn’t it? I say, Fred, what did you come back for at all? Why not stay in Australia?”

“I came back for many reasons. Partly to look after you, Brother Chris.”

“Oh! After me? Why after me?”

“Well, you see, you are the only one left who knew of my existence. Leonard remembered nothing about me. My grandfather’s lawyers had never heard of me. And one day there came into my head—it was like a voice speaking to me—it said, ‘Fred, you are a Fool. You’ve been twenty years in this country. You’ve got an old lunatic of a grandfather who must have piles and piles of money. Perhaps he’s dead. And no one but Christopher left to remember you. Get off home as quick as you can. Christopher,’ said this remarkable voice, ‘is quite capable of putting his hands on the lot and forgetting you.’ That is what the voice said, my brother.”

“Sometimes it’s rats: sometimes it’s cats: sometimes it’s circles: sometimes it’s a voice. Fred, you must have been pretty far gone.”

“Perhaps. But I listened to that voice, and, what is more, I obeyed it, and came home. The old man isn’t gone yet. So far that’s safe. And the lawyers know of my existence. So that’s all right. You won’t get the chance of forgetting me, after all.”

“Very good, very good. There will be very soon, I should say, the division of a most almighty pile, Fred. You are quite welcome to your share.”

“Much obliged, I’m sure. Do you know how much it is?”

“I am afraid to calculate. Besides, what will has he made?”

“Will, my boy! He’s got £6,000 a year, and he spends nothing and he gives nothing. All that money, with something he had from his mother, has been rolling up and rolling up. How much is it? A million? Two millions? And here am I hard up for want of a few pounds, and you, a Fraud and an Impostor, working like a nigger, and all that money waiting to be spent as it should be spent. It’s maddening, Chris—it’s maddening.”

“So it is, so it is. But nothing can be done. Well, you were on the highroad to D.T., and, instead of seeing rats, you heard a voice calumniating your brother, and you came home; and you put your vast concern in your pocket—the waistcoat pocket held it all, no doubt.”

“What the devil does it matter which pocket held it?”

Christopher leaned back and joined the tips of his fingers.

“I wasn’t going to spoil your game, Fred, though that devil of a voice did speak such utterances. But I knew all along. I smelt a fake, so to speak. You a man of business? You the head of a great Colonial Enterprise? No, no; it was too thin, my brother—too thin. Not but what you looked the part—I will say that.”

“Upon my word, I thought it was going to come off. I got hold of a company promoter. He said he’s steered craft more crazy than mine into Port. Talked of a valuation: talked of assigning 50,000 shares to me as owner of the Colonial business——”

“Well, but, Fred, come to the facts; sooner or later the facts would have to be faced, you know. What was the Colonial business?”

“It was a going concern fast enough when I left it. Whether it’s going now I don’t know. A lovely shanty by the roadside, stocked with a large assortment of sardines, Day and Martin, tea, flour, and sugar. What more do you want? The thing I traded on was not the shanty, but the possible ‘development.’”

“The development of the shanty. Excellent!”

“The development, I say, out of this humble roadside beginning. I made great use of the humble beginning: I thought they would accept the first steps of the development. I proposed a vast company with stores all over Australia for the sale of everything. Barlow Brothers were to serve the Australian Continent. We were to have our sugar estates in the Mauritius: our coffee estates in Ceylon: our tea estates in Assam: our flour-mills everywhere: our vineyards in France and Germany——”

“I see—I see. Quite enough, Fred; the scheme does you great honour. So you went into the City with it.”

“I did. I’ve wasted buckets full of champagne over it, and whisky enough to float a first-class yacht. And what’s the result?”

“I see. And you’ve come to an end.”

“That is so. The very end. Look!” He pulled out his watch-chain. There was no watch at the end of it. “The watch has gone in,” he said. “The chain will go next. And there’s the hotel bill.”

“Rather a heavy bill, I should imagine.”

“I’ve done myself well, Christopher.”

“And how are you going to pay that bill? And what are you going to do afterwards?”

“I thought of those accumulations. I went down to see the old man. He’s quite well and hearty—wouldn’t speak to me. Pretends to be deaf and dumb. But the housekeeper says he understands everything. So he knows of my existence. The woman gave me the address of his solicitors, and I’ve been to see them. I wanted an advance, you know, just a little advance on the accumulations.”

“Ah!”

“But they won’t acknowledge that they have any power. ‘My dear Sir,’ I said, ‘I don’t ask whether you have any power or not—I don’t care whether you advance me a thousand on my reversionary interest, or whether you lend it yourself.’ No, sir, the fellow wouldn’t budge. Said I must prove the possession of reversionary interest: said he wasn’t a money-lender: said I had better go to a bank and show security. Here I am one of the heirs to a noble fortune. I don’t know how much, but it must be something enormous. Why, his estate is worth £6,000 a year, and I know that there was money besides which he had from his mother. Enormous! Enormous! And here I am wanting a poor thousand.”

“It seems hard, doesn’t it? But, then, are you sure that you are one of the heirs?”

“The old man is off his head. Everything will be divided. He can’t live long.”

“No. But he may live five or six years more.”

“Well, Christopher, the long and the short of it is that you will have to find that money. You may charge interest: you may take my bond: you will do what you like: but I must have that money.”

“The long and the short of it, Fred, is this: I am not going to give, or to lend, or to advance, any money to you at all. Put that in your pipe.”

“Oh!” Fred helped himself to another whisky-and-water. “You won’t, eh? Then, what do you think of my blowing this flourishing concern of yours, eh?”

Christopher changed colour.

“What do you think, Christopher, of my going to call on Pembridge Crescent, and letting out in the most natural and casual way in the world, that I’ve just come from the rooms in Chancery Lane where you carry on your business?”

“Fred, you—you—you are a most infernal scoundrel!”

“What business? asks my sister-in-law. What business? asks my niece. What business? asks my nephew. Why, says I, don’t you know? Hasn’t he told you? Quite a flourishing income—almost as flourishing as Barlow Brothers. It’s in the Fraudulent Speech Supply Line. That’s a pretty sort of shell to drop in the middle of your family circle, isn’t it?”

“Fred, you were always the most cold-blooded villain that ever walked.”

“That’s what I shall do, my dear brother. More than that, I shall go and see Leonard. That aristocratic young gentleman, who thinks so much about his family, will be greatly pleased, will he not?”

We need not follow the conversation, which became at this point extremely animated. Memories long since supposed to be forgotten and buried and put away were revived, with comments satirical, indignant, or contemptuous. Language of the strongest was employed. The office boy put down his novelette, and wondered what Jack Harkaway would do under such circumstances. Indeed, the past lives of the two brothers lent themselves singularly to the recollection of romantic adventures and episodes of a startling character. Presently—we are not Cain and Abel—the conversation became milder. Some kind of compromise began to be considered.

“Well, I don’t mind,” said Fred at length. “I don’t care so long as I can get the money. But I must have the money—or some money—and that before long.”

“You can put your case before Leonard, if you like. He won’t give you much, because he hasn’t got much to give. I think he has a few hundreds a year from his mother. He might advance on his reversions, but he isn’t that sort of man at all.”

“I’ll try. But, look you, Christopher, if he refuses I’ll take it out of you. How would you like all the world to know how you live? And, by the Lord, sir, if I have to tell all the world, I will.”

“I was a great fool, Fred, to let you into the secret. I might have known, from old experience, what you would do with it to suit your own purpose. Always the dear old uncalculating, unselfish, truthful brother—always!”

Fred took another drink and another cigar. Then he invoked a blessing upon his brother with all the cordiality proper for such a blessing and retired.