Mr. Harold de Vinne was a large man, who dwelt at the dead end of a
massive cigar.
He was big and broad-shouldered, and automatically jovial. Between the
hours of 6 p.m. and 2 a.m. he had earned the name of "good fellow,"
which reputation he did his best to destroy between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.
He was one of four stout fellows who controlled companies of imposing
stability--the kind of companies that have such items in their balance
sheets as "Sundry Debtors, £107,402 12s. 7d." People feel, on
reading such airy lines, that the company's assets are of such
magnitude that the sundry debtors are only included as a careless
afterthought.
Mr. de Vinne was so rich that he looked upon any money which wasn't his
as an illegal possession; and when Mr. Augustus Tibbetts, on an
occasion, stepped in and robbed him of £17,500, Mr. de Vinne's family
doctor was hastily summoned (figuratively speaking; literally, he had
no family, and swore by certain patent medicines), and straw was spread
before the temple of his mind.
A certain Captain Hamilton, late of H.M. Houssas, but now a partner in
the firm of Tibbetts & Hamilton, Ltd., after a short, sharp bout of
malaria, went off to Brighton to recuperate, and to get the whizzy
noises out of his head. To him arrived on a morning a special courier
in the shape of one Ali, an indubitable Karo boy, but reputedly pure
Arab, and a haj, moreover, entitled to the green scarf of the
veritable pilgrimage to Mecca.
Ali was the body-servant of Augustus Tibbetts, called by his intimates
"Bones," and he was arrayed in the costume which restaurateurs insist
is the everyday kit of a true Easterner--especially such Easterners as
serve after-dinner coffee.
Hamilton, not in the best of tempers--malaria leaves you that way--and
dazzled by this apparition in scarlet and gold, blinked.
"O man," he said testily in the Arabic of the Coast, "why do you
walk-in-the world dressed like a so-and-so?" (You can be very rude in
Arabic especially in Coast Arabic garnished with certain Swahili
phrases.) "Sir," said Ali, "these garmentures are expressly designated by
Tibbetti. Embellishments of oriferous metal give wealthiness of
appearance to subject, but attract juvenile research and investigation."
Hamilton glared through the window on to the front, where a small but
representative gathering of the juvenile research committee waited
patiently for the reappearance of one whom in their romantic fashion
they had termed "The Rajah of Bong."
Hamilton took the letter and opened it. It was, of course, from Bones,
and was extremely urgent. Thus it went: