half an hour's hair-pulling he went slowly across his beautiful room and knocked discreetly on the door of the outer office.
Miss Marguerite Whitland had long since grown weary of begging him to drop this practice. She found it a simple matter to say "Come in!" and Bones entered, closing the door behind him, and stood in a deferential attitude two paces from the closed door.
"Young miss," he said quietly, "may I consult you?"
"You may even consult me," she said as gravely.
"It is a very curious problem, dear old Marguerite," said Bones in a low, hushed tone. "It concerns the future of my very dearest friend--the very dearest friend in all the world," he said emphatically, "of the male sex," he added hastily. "Of course, friendships between jolly old officers are on a different plane, if you understand me, to friendships between--I mean to say, dear old thing, I'm not being personal or drawing comparisons, because the feeling I have for you----"
Here his eloquence ran dry. She knew him now well enough to be neither confused nor annoyed nor alarmed when Bones broke forth into an exposition of his private feelings. Very calmly she returned the conversation to the rails.
"It is a matter which concerns a very dear friend of yours," she said suggestively, and Bones nodded and beamed.
"Of course you guessed that," he said admiringly. "You're the jolliest old typewriter that ever lived! I don't suppose any other young woman in London would have----"
"Oh, yes, they would," she said. "You'd already told me. I suppose that you've forgotten it."
"Well, to cut a long story short, dear old Miss Marguerite," said Bones, leaning confidentially on the table and talking down into her upturned lace, "I must find the whereabouts of a certain rascal or rascals, trading or masquerading, knowingly or unknowingly, to the best of my knowledge and belief, as the----" He stopped and frowned. "Now, what the dickens was the name of that bird?" he said. "Pheasant, partridge, ostrich, bat, flying fish, sparrow--it's something to do with eggs. What are the eggs you eat?"
"I seldom eat eggs," said the girl quietly, "but when I do they are the eggs of the common domestic fowl."
"It ain't him," said Bones, shaking his head. "No, it's--I've got it--Plover--the Plover Light Car Company."
The girl made a note on her pad.
"I want you to get the best men in London to search out this Company. If necessary, get two private detectives, or even three. Set them to work at once, and spare no expense. I want to know who's running the company--I'd investigate the matter myself, but I'm so fearfully busy--and where their offices are. Tell the detectives," said Bones, warming to the subject, "to hang around the motor-car shops in the West End. They're bound to hear a word dropped here and there, and----"
"I quite understand," said the girl.
Bones put out his lean paw and solemnly shook the girl's hand.
"If," he said, with a tremble in his voice, "if there's a typewriter in London that knows more than you, my jolly old Marguerite, I'll eat my head."
On which lines he made his exit.
Five minutes later the girl came into the office with a slip of paper.
"The Plover Motor Car Company is registered at 604, Gracechurch Street," she said. "It has a capital of eighty thousand pounds, of which forty thousand pounds is paid up. It has works at Kenwood, in the north-west of London, and the managing director is Mr. Charles O. Soames."
Bones could only look at her open-mouthed.
"Where on earth did you discover all this surprising information, dear miss?" he asked, and the girl laughed quietly.
"I can even tell you their telephone number," she said, "because it happens to be in the Telephone Book. The rest I found in the Stock Exchange Year Book."
Bones shook his head in silent admiration.
"If there's a typewriter in London----" he began, but she had fled.
An hour later Bones had evolved his magnificent idea. It was an idea worthy of his big, generous heart and his amazing optimism.
Mr. Charles O. Soames, who sat at a littered table in his shirt-sleeves, was a man with a big shock of hair and large and heavily drooping moustache, and a black chin. He smoked a big, heavy pipe, and, at the moment Bones was announced, his busy pencil was calling into life a new company offering the most amazing prospects to the young and wealthy.
He took the card from the hands of his very plain typist, and suppressed the howl of joy which rose to his throat. For the name of Bones was known in the City of London, and it was the dream of such men as Charles O. Soames that one day they would walk from the office of Mr. Augustus Tibbetts with large parcels of his paper currency under each arm.
He jumped up from his chair and slipped on a coat, pushed the prospectus he was writing under a heap of documents--one at least of which bore a striking family likeness to a county court writ--and welcomed his visitor decorously and even profoundly.
"In _re_ Plover Car," said Bones briskly. He prided himself upon coming to the point with the least possible delay.
The face of Mr. Soames fell.
"Oh, you want to buy a car?" he said. He might have truly said "the car," but under the circumstances he thought that this would be tactless.
"No, dear old company promoter," said Bones, "I do not want to buy your car. In fact, you have no cars to sell."
"We've had a lot of labour trouble," said Mr. Soames hurriedly. "You've no idea of the difficulties in production--what with the Government holding up supplies--but in a few months----"
"I know all about that," said Bones. "Now, I'm a man of affairs and a man of business."
He said this so definitely that it sounded like a threat.
"I'm putting it to you, as one City of London business person to another City of London business person, is it possible to make cars at your factory?"
Mr. Soames rose to the occasion.
"I assure you, Mr. Tibbetts," he said earnestly, "it is possible. It wants a little more capital than we've been able to raise."
This was the trouble with all Mr. Soames's companies, a long list of which appeared on a brass plate by the side of his door. None of them were sufficiently capitalised to do anything except to supply him with his fees as managing director.
Bones produced a dinky little pocket-book from his waistcoat and read his notes, or, rather, attempted to read his notes. Presently he gave it up and trusted to his memory.
"You've got forty thousand pounds subscribed to your Company," he said. "Now, I'll tell you what I'm willing to do--I will take over your shares at a price."
Mr. Soames swallowed
