"We'll have to make this thing public on Wednesday. My dear fellow, I nearly fainted when I heard that that impossible young person had photographed us together. When do you go back to Paris?" "I think I had better stay here," said Mr. Jorris. "Did the young man bleed you?" "Only for six thousand," said the pleasant Mr. Walters. "I hope the young beggar's a bear in oil," he added viciously. But Bones, as we know, was a bull. CHAPTER VI A DEAL IN JUTE It is a reasonable theory that every man of genius is two men, one visible, one unseen and often unsuspected by his counterpart. For who has not felt the shadow's influence in dealing with such as have the Spark? Napoleon spoke of stars, being Corsican and a mystic. Those who met him in his last days were uneasily conscious that the second Bonaparte had died on the eve of Waterloo, leaving derelict his brother, a stout and commonplace man who was in turn sycophantic, choleric, and pathetic, but never great. Noticeable is the influence of the Shadow in the process of money-making. It is humanly impossible for some men to be fortunate. They may amass wealth by sheer hard work and hard reasoning, but if they seek a shorter cut to opulence, be sure that short cut ends in a cul-de-sac where sits a Bankruptcy Judge and a phalanx of stony-faced creditors. "Luck" is not for them--they were born single. For others, the whole management of life is taken from their hands by their busy Second, who ranges the world to discover opportunities for his partner. So it comes about that there are certain men, and Augustus Tibbetts--or, as he was named, "Bones"--was one of these, to whom the increments of life come miraculously. They could come in no other way, be he ever so learned and experienced. Rather would a greater worldliness have hampered his familiar and in time destroyed its power, just as education destroys the more subtle instincts. Whilst the learned seismographer eats his dinner, cheerfully unconscious of the coming earthquake, his dog shivers beneath the table. By this preamble I am not suggesting that Bones was a fool. Far from it. Bones was wise--uncannily wise in some respects. His success was due, as to nine-tenths, to his native sense. His _x_ supplied the other fraction. No better illustration of the working of this concealed quantity can be given than the story of the great jute sale and Miss Bertha Stegg. The truth about the Government speculation in jute is simply told. It is the story of an official who, in the middle of the War, was seized with the bright idea of procuring enormous quantities of jute for the manufacture of sand-bags. The fact that by this transaction he might have driven the jute lords of Dundee into frenzy did not enter into his calculations. Nor did it occur to him that the advantageous position in which he hoped to place his Department depended for its attainment upon a total lack of foresight on the part of the Dundee merchants.