"I mean that I have found Nelly, and I mean that, thank Heaven! I have found you too--never, my darling, please Heaven! to lose sight of you again." They had only just time to withdraw from a too suspicious neighbourhood, before the door opened again to admit Mrs. Morgan. "Tom, this is our new lodger. I just asked her if she'd mind stepping downstairs while I tidied up her room a bit. Miss Reeves, this is an old sweetheart of mine--Mr. Gibbs." Mr. Gibbs turned to the "new lodger." "Miss Reeves and I are already acquainted. Miss Reeves, you have heard me speak of Mrs. Morgan, though not by that name. This is Nelly." Miss Reeves turned and looked at Mrs. Morgan, and as she looked--she gasped. La Haute Finance A TALE OF THE BIGGEST COUP ON RECORD CHAPTER I "By Jove! I believe it could be done!" Mr. Rodney Railton took the cigarette out of his mouth and sent a puff of smoke into the air. "I believe it could, by Jove!" Another puff of smoke. "I'll write to Mac." He drew a sheet of paper towards him and penned the following:-- "DEAR ALEC,--Can you give me some dinner to-night? Wire me if you have a crowd. I shall be in the House till four. Have something to propose which will make your hair stand up. "Yours, R. R." This he addressed "Alexander Macmathers, Esq., 27, Campden Hill Mansions." As he went downstairs he gave the note to the commissionaire, with instructions that it should be delivered at once by hand. That night Mr. Railton dined with Mr. Macmathers. The party consisted of three, the two gentlemen and a lady--Mrs. Macmathers, in fact. Mr. Macmathers was an American--a Southerner--rather tall and weedy, with a heavy, drooping moustache, like his hair, raven black. He was not talkative. His demeanour gave a wrong impression of the man--the impression that he was not a man of action. As a matter of fact, he was a man of action before all things else. He was not rich, as riches go, but certainly he was not poor. His temperament was cosmopolitan, and his profession Jack-of-all-trades. Wherever there was money to be made, he was there. Sometimes, it must be confessed, he was there, too, when there was money to be lost. His wife was English--keen and clever. Her chief weakness was that she would persist in looking on existence as a gigantic lark. When she was most serious she regarded life least _au sérieux_.