And the little man never turned a hair!  “That will be perfectly satisfactory,” he said.  “I will attend to it at once.”  And the other’s heart gave a great leap.

And sure enough, the next morning’s mail brought the money, in the shape of a cashier’s cheque from one of the big banks.  Montague deposited it to his own account, and felt that the city was his!

And so he flung himself into the work.  He went to his office every day, and he shut himself up in his own rooms in the evening.  Mrs. Winnie was in despair because he would not come and learn bridge, and Mrs. Vivie Patton sought him in vain for a week-end party.  He could not exactly say that while the others slept he was toiling upward in the night, for the others did not sleep in the night; but he could say that while they were feasting and dancing, he was delving into insurance law.  Oliver argued in vain to make him realize that he could not live for ever upon one client; and that it was as important for a lawyer to be a social light as to win his first big case.  Montague was so absorbed that he even failed to be thrilled when one morning he opened an invitation envelope, and read the fateful legend:  “Mrs. Devon requests the honour of your company”—­telling him that he had “passed” on that critical examination morning, and that he was definitely and irrevocably in Society!

CHAPTER XII

Montague was now a capitalist, and therefore a keeper of the gates of opportunity.  It seemed as though the seekers for admission must have had some occult way of finding it out; almost immediately they began to lay siege to him.

About a week after his cheque arrived, Major Thorne, whom he had met the first evening at the Loyal Legion, called him up and asked to see him; and he came to Montague’s room that evening, and after chatting awhile about old times, proceeded to unfold a business proposition.  It seemed that the Major had a grandson, a young mechanical engineer, who had been labouring for a couple of years at a very important invention, a device for loading coal upon steamships and weighing it automatically in the process.  It was a very complicated problem, needless to say, but it had been solved successfully, and patents had been applied for, and a working model constructed.  But it had proved unexpectedly difficult to interest the officials of the great steamship companies in the device.  There was no doubt about the practicability of the machine, or the economies it would effect; but the officials raised trivial objections, and caused delays, and offered prices that were ridiculously inadequate.  So the young inventor had conceived the idea of organizing a company to manufacture the machines, and rent them upon a royalty.  “I didn’t know whether you would have any money,” said Major Thorne, “—­but I thought you might be in touch with others who could be got to look into the matter.  There is a fortune in it for those who take it up.”