“I was just taking a look at the exchanges,” he replied.  “The mark’s about the same price as fly-paper, and, judging by the news from New York, your chewing-gum is going to cost you more shortly.  Do you know anything about the money market?”

“I occasionally see it stated that ‘money is plentiful’ in it,” I returned.  “I should think it must be an ideal place.”

“The most gorgeous thing in the world is to make a bit on exchange,” he said.  “There’s such a splendid feeling of not having earned it, you know.”

“I understand exactly,” I replied.  “Cox once credited me with an extra month’s pay by mistake.  But I didn’t realise that you ever had to think about money matters after having run our Mess in France.”

He appeared to take no offence.  His capacity for being insulted in that direction had probably been exhausted during the period in point.

“I know quite a lot about exchange,” he remarked with a reminiscent smile.  “You remember that when I got pipped in France in ’15, they sent me out next time to Salonica.  I hadn’t been there very long before the question of exchange cropped up.  In the early days most of us had English money only, and the villagers used to rook us frightfully changing it.  I remember sending my batman, MacGusgogh, to a place for eggs, and he came back with the change for my Bradbury in nickel.  I had a good look at it, and on each coin was the mystic inscription, ‘DIHAP,’ which is pronounced ‘dinar.’

“‘MacGusgogh,’ I said, ’you pretend to be a Scotsman and yet you’ve been diddled.  This is Serbian money, and not worth a bean.’

“‘Oh the deceitfu’ deevils,’ said he, ’there’s neither truth nor honesty in the leein’ buddies, Sir.  But here’s your Bradbury, an’, at onny rate, we hae the eggs, Sir, for I paid for them wi’ a label off yin o’ they Japaneesy beer bottles.  It seemed an awfu’ waste to spend guid siller on folk that dinna ken when they see it.’”

I began to see the possibilities of the money market.

“I was round about there till the Armistice,” Jones went on, “then I drifted by stages to South Russia.  All the Eastern countries live by exchange.  Practically the only trade they have is playing tennis with each others’ currency, and the headquarters of the industry in 1918 was South Russia.  I thought I’d seen the limit of low finance when I’d experienced the franc, lira, drachma, dinar, lev and piastre; but they were all child’s play to the rouble in 1918.”

“I thought Russian money was all dud before that,” I remarked.

“Not a bit of it,” said Jones.  “You see, it’s not as if there were one breed, so to speak, of rouble.  There were KERENSKY roubles, and Duma roubles, and NICHOLAS roubles, and every little town had a rouble-works which was turning out local notes as hard as they, could go.  I missed a fortune there by inches.”

“Tell me,” I said, in response to his anecdotal eye.