In two months it all came out. Lawyers are notoriously lax in making their own wills. Harry, who could master a case quicker than any man at the Bar, and could see to the soul and beyond it of a hostile witness a minute after getting on his feet to cross-examine, was fooled blind by the syndicate that was going to put the absolutely first-class article on the market. Whether it was that there never had been a business, and that Harry’s inspection of works, visits to show-rooms, and examination of books, was all part of an elaborate swindle carried out with the aid of some one who possessed these accessories; or whether it was that the whole thing was bought up cheap merely to sell at a profit, was never clearly known to Harry and to Rosalie. Harry was too grieved to pursue the shock. “I’ll take not a step further in the matter, Rosalie,” Harry said. “I can’t bear to find the boy out deeper. It’s done. There’s no sense in being stupid or unkind about it.” What happened was that the car enterprise never was an enterprise at all except an enterprise to get eight thousand pounds into the possession of the syndicate. Nothing ever was properly announced by Huggo. It just “came out.” It “came out” that the syndicate was not established in the West End show-rooms but in three rather dingy offices in the city. It “came out” that the syndicate was not running a motor-car business but a business cryptically described as “Agents.” Huggo said disaster had overtaken the car enterprise and that the syndicate, rescuing what remained of the smash, had pluckily set up on another line. He thought he could scrape along. It was a knockout of course, but he thought he could scrape along. “But what I can’t make out, old man,” said Harry, when Huggo had stumbled through an entirely non-explanatory explanation of the syndicate’s business in its new capacity as agents, “What I can’t make out, old man, is why you should trade under another name. Why, ‘So-and-So, and So-and-So, and So-and-So, Agents’--I can’t ever remember the names? Why not ‘Telfer, Occleve and Turner’?” “Well, as a matter of fact, father--I want you to know everything without any concealment--” “I know you do, old man. I know you do.” “Well, as a matter of fact, that’s just a bit of useful swank. The names we’re trading under are swagger names and we think it sounds better.” “Occleve sounds pretty good to me, Huggo. We’ve been a good long way on Occleve, the Occleves.” “Well, that’s what they think, father, and of course, as I’ve told you, they know infinitely more about business than I do. They’ll explain the whole thing to you any time you like. It’s all absolutely above-board, father.”