CHAPTER I

TO INTRODUCE MR. JULIUS ROHSCHEIMER

"There's half a score of your ancestral halls," said Julius Rohscheimer, "that I could sell up to-morrow morning!"

Of the quartet that heard his words no two members seemed quite similarly impressed.

The pale face of Adeler, the great financier's confidential secretary, expressed no emotion whatever. Sir Richard Haredale flashed contempt from his grey eyes—only to veil his scorn of the man's vulgarity beneath a cloud of tobacco smoke. Tom Sheard, of the Gleaner, drew down a corner of his mouth and felt ashamed of the acquaintance. Denby, the music-hall comedian, softly whistled those bars of a popular ballad set to the words, "I stood in old Jerusalem."

"Come along to Park Lane with me," continued Rohscheimer, fixing his dull, prominent eyes upon Sheard, "and you'll see more English nobility than you'd find inside the House of Lords!"

"What's made him break out?" the comedian whispered, aside, to Adeler. For it was an open secret that this man, whose financial operations shook the thrones of monarchy, whose social fêtes were attended by the smartest people, was subject to outbursts of the kind which now saw him seated before a rapidly emptying magnum in a corner of the great restaurant. At such times he would frequent the promenades of music-halls, consorting with whom he found there, and would display the gross vulgarity of a Whitechapel pawnbroker or tenth-rate variety agent.

"'S-sh!" replied the secretary. "A big coup! It is always so with him. Mr. Rohscheimer is overwrought. I shall induce him to take a holiday."

"Trip up the Jordan?" suggested Denby, with cheery rudeness.

The secretary's drooping eyelids flickered significantly, but no other indication of resentment displayed itself upon that impassive face.

"A good Jew is proud of his race—and with reason!" he said quietly. "There are Jews and Jews."

He turned, deferentially, to his employer—that great man having solicited his attention with the words, "Hark to him, Adeler!"

"I did not quite catch Mr. Sheard's remark," said Adeler.

"I merely invited Mr. Rohscheimer to observe the scene upon his right," explained Sheard.

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