"Yes, they _may_; but, on the other hand, they mayn't. There are the Stock Exchange lists, with Phoenicians ticked off by your brother's own pen. A steady drop, you see. 'Let me have a telegram if there's a sudden rise,' said Sheldon to me the day he left London; 'they'll go up with rush when they do move.' But they've been moving the other way ever since; and I think if he stayed away till doomsday it would be pretty much the same." "_Phoenicians are rising rapidly. Come back to town._" These were the words of the telegraphic despatch which shaped itself in George Sheldon's brain, as his brother's clerk revealed the secrets of his employer. It was found--the solution of the one great question as to how Philip Sheldon was to be lured away from the bedside of his unconscious victim. Here was the bait. "I knew I could do it; I knew I could get all I wanted to know out of this shallow-brained idiot," he said to himself, triumphantly. And then he told the shallow-brained idiot that he thought he would write a line to his brother; and on that pretence went into Philip's office. Here, use his eyes as he might, he could discover nothing; he could glean no stray scrap of information. The secrets that could be guarded by concealed Bramah locks and iron safes, with mystic words to be learned by the man who would open them, Philip Sheldon knew how to protect. Unhappily for himself, he had been compelled to confide some of his secrets to human receptacles not to be guarded by Bramah locks or mystic words. The lawyer did not waste much time in his brother's office. A very hasty investigation showed him there was nothing to be learned from those bare walls and that inviolable cylinder-topped desk. He scribbled a few lines of commonplace at a table by the window, sealed and addressed his note, and then departed to despatch his telegram, "Phoenicians are rising rapidly," he wrote, and that was all. He signed the despatch Frederick Orcott. "Phil and Orcott may settle the business between them," he said to himself, as he forged the Yorkshireman's name. "What I have to do is to get Phil away, and give Hawkehurst a chance of saving Tom Halliday's daughter; and I shan't stand upon trifles in the doing of it." After having despatched this telegram, George Sheldon found himself much too restless and excited for ordinary business. He, so renowned even amongst cool hands for exceptional coolness, was on this occasion thoroughly unnerved. He dropped into a City tavern, and refreshed himself with a dram. But, amidst all the bustle and clatter of a crowded bar, the face of Tom Halliday, haggard and worn with illness, was before his eyes, and the sound of Tom Halliday's voice was in his ears. "I can't settle to anything this afternoon," he said to himself. "I'll run down to Bayswater, and see whether Hawkehurst has managed matters with Nancy Woolper." CHAPTER III. THE SORTES VIRGILIANAE.