"Mr. Harvey Grimm of Chicago," he muttered, studying his visitor's very immaculate appearance. "Haven't I heard the name somewhere, or seen it in the papers lately?"
"Possibly," was the suave reply. "My arrival in London has, I think, created some slight interest. Even your press, I find, is not above recording the movements of a capitalist."
"A what?"
"A capitalist," Harvey Grimm repeated calmly. "With a name like mine, and an abode like Chicago, I am amazed that you did not divine it."
"Seven years ago," Aaron Rodd observed, "we divided seventeen pounds, four shillings and eightpence. It was, I believe, our united capital."
"And to judge by your surroundings," his companion sighed, "I fear, my friend, that you have been emulating the man who tied up his talent in a stocking. I, on the other hand——"
"Have changed your name and become a capitalist," Aaron Rodd interrupted drily.
"Precisely!"
There was a moment's silence. Mr. Harvey Grimm, with the beatific smile of opulence, was whistling softly to himself. His companion's thoughts had apparently travelled back into the past.
"Well," the latter said at last, "I will imitate your candour. The document I was examining with so much interest when you came in, is a seven-year-old lease, long since cancelled. The few black boxes you see around the room are, with one exception, bogus. I sit here from morning till night and nothing happens. I sit here and brood."