Business men who travel daily to and from town by train fall almost inevitably into sets, who occupy always the same compartment and the same seats in it, and among whom exists a certain good-fellowship and friendliness. In John Dare’s set was a certain John Christianssen, of Norwegian extraction, long established in London in the timber business, which his father had founded sixty years before. Christianssen was British born, his father having been naturalised. He had two sons with him in the business, and both had got commissions through the Officers’ Training Corps, and were heart and soul in their work and eager for the front. More than once he had lamented to Mr Dare his loss in them just at this juncture. Not that he grudged them to the service of his adopted country but that their going made him feel, as he said, as if he had lost his right hand and one of his feet. Mr Dare sympathised with him but assured him it was better to have a healthy body even with only one hand and one foot than to have no body left. And Christianssen, knowing the nature of the business in St Mary Axe, understood, and thought the matter out. And so it came to pass, one morning when they got out at Cannon Street, that he said to Mr Dare, “I will walk your way, if you don’t mind. I want to talk to you.” And when they reached the office, where one small office-boy now represented the busy staff of old, he sat down in the second chair and lit a cigar, and said, “I know pretty well, from what I have heard and from what you have told me, Dare, how you are situated here. I have a proposal. I can’t go on without help. I want to be across in Norway and I want to be here at the same time. Now that Jack and Eric are away my hands are tied. There is huge business to be done with all this hutting going on, and I’m going to miss my share unless I make proper provision. And that is you! What do you say?” “It’s killing to be out of work, which I never have been before for over thirty years. My business is gone, as you know, and most of my capital. Some of it’s invested in the German War Loan----” “No!” “Yes! The low-scaled rascals, instead of remitting what they owe me, write to say they have loaned my money to their infernal government and it will be repaid with interest when the war is over--meaning, of course, over in the way they would like it.” “That is low business!” “Business! I call it simple dirty robbery. But it’s not only the fact that they’ve done this, but--well, I just feel that I would be glad never to have any dealings with any German again as long as I live.”