there a voice could be heard raised in anger, but the prevailing emotion seemed to be mere curiosity.  The people who would suffer most from the collapse of this high-sounding enterprise could not reach the scene of calamity at half an hour’s notice; they were dwellers in many parts of the British Isles, strangers most of them to London city, with but a vague mental picture of the local habitation of the Britannia Loan, Assurance, Investment, and Banking Company, Limited.

His arm was seized, and a voice said hoarsely in his ear —­

‘By God! too late.’

Hugh Carnaby had tumbled out of a cab, and saw his friend in the same moment that he got near enough to perceive that the doors of the bank were shut.

‘The thieves have lost no time,’ he added, pale with fury.

‘You had warning of it?’

Hugh pulled him a few yards away, and whispered ——­

‘Bennet Frothingham shot himself last night.’

Again Harvey experienced that disagreeable heart-shock, with the alternation of hot and cold.

‘Where?  At home?’

’At the office of Stock and Share.  Come farther away.  It’ll be in the evening papers directly, but I don’t want those blackguards to hear me.  I got up late this morning, and as I was having breakfast, Sibyl rushed in.  She brought the news; had it from some friend of her mother’s, a man connected somehow with Stock and Share.  I thought they would shut up shop, and came to try and save Sibyl’s balance —­ a couple of hundred, that’s all —­ but they’ve swallowed it with the rest.’

‘With the rest?’

Hugh laughed mockingly.

’Of hers.  Devilish bad luck Sibyl has.  It was just a toss-up that a good deal of my own wasn’t in, one way or another.’

‘Do you know any more about Frothingham?’

’No.  Only the fact.  Don’t know when it was, or when it got known.  We shall have it from the papers presently.  I think every penny Mrs Larkfield had was in.’

‘But it may not mean absolute ruin,’ urged Harvey.

’I know what to think when B. F. commits suicide.  We shall hear that some of the others have bolted.  It’ll be as clean a sweep as our housekeeper’s little job.’

‘I’ve had queer presentiments,’ Harvey murmured.

’Why, damn it, so have I!  So had lots of people.  But nobody ever does anything till it’s too late.  I must get home again with my agreeable news.  You’ll be going to the club, I dare say?  They’ll have plenty to talk about for the next month or two.’

‘Try to come round tonight to my place.’

’Perhaps.  It depends on fifty chances.  There’s only one thing I know for certain —­ that I shall get out of this cursed country as soon as possible.’