For Mr. Montague Nevitt was a cautious, cool, and calculating person. He knew, better than most of us that knowledge is power. So when the manager mentioned to him casually in the way of business the names of Guy and Cyril Waring, Mr. Montague Nevitt didn’t respond at once, “Oh, dear yes; one of them’s my most intimate personal friend, and the other’s his brother,” as a man of less discretion might have been tempted to do. For, in the first place, by finding out, or seeming to find out, the facts about the Warings that very afternoon, he could increase his character with his employers for zeal and ability. And, in the second place, if he had let out too soon that he knew the Warings personally, he might most likely on that very account have been no further employed in carrying into execution this delicate little piece of family business.

So Nevitt held his peace discreetly, like a wise man that he was, and answered merely, in a most submissive voice, “I’ll do my best to ascertain where they bank, at once,” as if he had never before in his life heard the name of Waring.

For the self-same reason, Mr. Montague Nevitt didn’t hint that evening to Guy that he had become possessed during the course of the day of a secret of the first importance to Guy’s fortune and future. Of course, a man so astute as Montague Nevitt jumped at once at the correct conclusion, that Colonel Kelmscott must be the two Warings’ father. But he wasn’t going to be fool enough to chuck his chance away by sharing that information with any second person. A secret is far too valuable a lever in life to be carelessly flung aside by a man of ambition. And Montague Nevitt saw this secret in particular was doubly valuable to him. He could use it, wedge-wise, with both the Warings in all his future dealings, by promising to reveal to one or other of them a matter of importance and probable money-value, and he could use it also as a perpetual threat to hold over Colonel Kelmscott, if ever it should be needful to extort blackmail from the possessor of Tilgate, or to thwart his schemes by some active interference.

So when Nevitt strolled round about nine o’clock that night to Staple Inn, violin-case in hand, and cigarette in mouth, he gave not a sign of the curious information he had that day acquired, to the person most interested in learning the truth as to the precise genealogy of the Waring family.

There was no great underlying community of interests between the clever young journalist and his banking companion. A common love for music was the main bond of union between the two men. Yet Montague Nevitt exercised over Guy a strange and fatal fascination which Cyril always found positively unaccountable. And on this particular evening, as Nevitt stood swaying himself to and fro upon the hearth-rug before the empty grate, with his eyes half closed, drawing low, weird music with his enchanted bow from those submissive strings, Guy leaned back on the sofa and listened, entranced, with a hopeless feeling of utter inability ever to approach the wizard-like and supreme execution of that masterly hand and those superhuman fingers. How he twisted and turned them as though his bones were india-rubber. His palms were all joints, and his eyes all ecstasy. He seemed able to do what he liked with his violin. He played on his instrument, indeed, as he played on Guy—with the consummate art of a skilful executant.

“That’s marvellous, Nevitt,” Guy broke out at last; “never heard even Sarasate himself do anything quite so wild and weird as that. What’s the piece called? It seems to have something almost impish or sprite-like in its wailing music. It’s Hungarian, of course, or Polish or Greek; I detect at once the Oriental tinge in it.”

“Wrong for once, my dear boy,” Nevitt answered, smiling, “it’s English, pure English, and by a lady what’s more—one of the Eweses of Kenilworth. She’s a distant relation of Cyril’s Miss Clifford, I believe. An Elma, too; name runs in the family. But she composes wonderfully. Everything she writes is in that mystic key. It sounds like a reminiscence of some dim and lamp-lit eastern temple. The sort of thing a nautch-girl might be supposed to compose, to sing to the clash and clang of cymbals, while she was performing the snake-dance before some Juggernaut idol!”

“Exactly,” Guy answered, shutting his eyes dreamily. “That’s just the very picture it brings up before my mind’s eye—as you render it, Nevitt. I seem to see vague visions of some vast and dimly-lighted rock-hewn cavern, with long vistas of pillars cut from the solid stone, while dark-limbed priestesses, clad in white muslin robes, swing censers in the foreground to solemn music. Upon my word, the power of sound is something simply wonderful. There’s almost nothing, I believe, good music wouldn’t drive me to—or rather lead me to; for it sways one and guides even more than it impels one.”

“And yet,” Nevitt mused, in slow tones to himself, taking up his violin again, and drawing his bow over the chords, with half-closed eyes, in a seemingly listless, aimless manner, “I don’t believe music’s your real first love, Guy. You took it up only to be different from Cyril. The artistic impulse in both of you is the same at bottom. If you’d let it have it’s own way, you’d have taken, not to this, I’m sure, but to painting. But Cyril painted, so, to make yourself different, you went in for music. That’s you all over! You always have such a hankering after being what you are not!”

“Well, hang it all, a man wants to have SOME individuality,” Guy answered apologetically. “He doesn’t like to be a mere copy or repetition of his brother.”

Nevitt reflected quietly to himself that Cyril never wanted to be different from Guy, his was by far the stronger nature of the two: he was content to be himself without regard to his brother. But Nevitt didn’t say so. Indeed, why should he? He merely went on playing a few disconnected bars of a very lively, hopeful utopian sort of a tune—a tune all youth and health, and go and gaiety—as he interjected from time to time some brief financial remarks on the numerous good strokes he’d pulled off of late in his transactions in the City.

“Can’t do them in my own name, you know,” he observed lightly, at last laying down his bow, and replacing the dainty white rose in his left top buttonhole. “Not official for a bank EMPLOYE to operate on the Stock Exchange. T............