“Garratt Skinner’s address?” he said, with one of his flashes of cunning.

“Yes, since you are staying there.  I shall want to write to you.”

Walter Hine still hesitated.

“You won’t peach to Garratt Skinner about the allowance, eh?”

“My dear fellow!” said Mr. Jarvice.  He was more hurt than offended.  “To put it on the lowest ground, what could I gain?”

Walter Hine wrote down the address, and at once the clerk appeared at the door and handed Jarvice a card.

“I will see him,” said Jarvice, and turning to Hine:  “Our business is over, I think.”

Jarvice opened a second door which led from the inner office straight down a little staircase into the street.  “Good-by.  You shall hear from me,” he said, and Walter Hine went out.

Jarvice closed the door and turned back to his clerk.

“That will do,” he said.

There was no client waiting at all.  Mr. Jarvice had an ingenious contrivance for getting rid of his clients at the critical moment after they had come to a decision and before they had time to change their minds.  By pressing a particular button in the leather covering of the right arm of his chair, he moved an indicator above the desk of his clerk in the outer office.  The clerk thereupon announced a visitor, and the one in occupation was bowed out by the private staircase.  By this method Walter Hine had been dismissed.

Jarvice had the address of Garratt Skinner.  But he sat with it in front of him upon his desk for a long time before he could bring himself to use it.  All the amiability had gone from his expression now that he was alone.  He was in a savage mood, and every now and then a violent gesture betrayed it.  But it was with himself that he was angry.  He had been a fool not to keep a closer watch on Walter Hine.

“I might have foreseen,” he cried in his exasperation.  “Garratt Skinner!  If I had not been an ass, I should have foreseen.”

For Mr. Jarvice was no stranger to Walter Hine’s new friend.  More than one young buck fresh from the provinces, heir to the great factory or the great estate, had been steered into this inner office by the careful pilotage of Garratt Skinner.  In all the army of the men who live by their wits, there was not one to Jarvice’s knowledge who was so alert as Garratt Skinner to lay hands upon the new victim or so successful in lulling his suspicions.  He might have foreseen that Garratt Skinner would throw his net over Walter Hine.  But he had not, and the harm was done.

Mr. Jarvice took the insurance policy from his safe and shook his head over it sadly.  He had seen his way to making in his quiet fashion, and at comparatively little cost, a tidy little sum of one hundred thousand pounds.  Now he must take a partner, so that he might not have an enemy.  Garratt Skinner with Barstow for his jackal and the pretty daughter for his decoy was too powerful a factor to be lightly regarded.  Jarvice must share with Garratt Skinner—­unless he preferred to abandon his scheme altogether; and that Mr. Jarvice would not do.