"You keep a bit of sealing wax, of course?" suggested Allerdyke. "Take care that some of the brass sticks when you handle it, no doubt?" "Commission and percentage, of course," responded Fullaway. "Ah, well, you've an advantage over chaps like me," said Allerdyke. "Now, you shall take my case. We've made a pile of money in our firm, grandfather, father, and myself; but, Lord, man, you wouldn't believe what our expenses have been! Building mills, fitting machinery--and then, wages! Why, I pay wages to six hundred workpeople every Friday afternoon! Our wages bill runs to well over fourteen hundred pound a week. You've naught of that sort, of course--no great staff to keep up?" "No," answered Fullaway. He nodded his head towards the door of a room through which they had just passed on their way into the agent's private apartments. "All the staff I have is the young lady you just saw--Mrs. Marlow. Invaluable!" "Married woman?" inquired Allerdyke laconically. "Young widow," answered Fullaway just as tersely. "Excellent business woman--been with me ever since I came here--three years. Speaks and writes several languages--well educated, good knowledge of my particular line of business. American--I knew her people very well. Of course, I don't require much assistance--merely clerical help, but it's got to be of a highly intelligent and specialized sort." "Leave your business in her hands if need be, I reckon?" suggested Allerdyke, with a sidelong nod at the closed door. "In ordinary matters, yes--comfortably," answered Fullaway. "She's a bit a specialist in two things that I'm mainly concerned in--pictures and diamonds. She can tell a genuine Old Master at a glance, and she knows a lot about diamonds--her father was in that trade at one time, out in South Africa." "Clever woman to have," observed Allerdyke; "knows all your business, of course?" "All the surface business," said Fullaway, "naturally! Anything but a confidential secretary would be useless to me, you know." "Just so," agreed Allerdyke. "Told her about this affair yet?" "I've had no chance so far," replied Fullaway. "I shall take her advice about it--she's a cute woman." "Smart-looking, sure enough," said Allerdyke. He let his mind dwell for a moment on the picture which Mrs. Marlow had made as Fullaway led him through the office--a very well-gowned, pretty, alert, piquant little woman, still on the sunny side of thirty, who had given him a sharp glance out of unusually wide-awake eyes. "Aye, women are clever nowadays, no doubt--they'd show their grandmothers how to suck eggs in a good many new fashions. Well, now," he went on, stretching his long legs over Fullaway's beautiful Persian rug, "what do you make of this affair, Fullaway, in its present situation? There's no doubt that everything's considerably altered by what we've heard of this morning. Do you really think that this French maid affair is all of a piece, as one may term it, with the affair of my cousin James?"