“All right,” said the other.  “It can be done very quickly.  You have taken a case which involves a great many sacrifices upon your part.  And I wondered if it had ever occurred to you to ask whether you might not be taken advantage of?”

“How do you mean?” asked Montague.

“Do you know the people who are behind you?” inquired the other.  “Do you know them well enough to be sure what are their motives in the case?”

Montague hesitated, and thought.  “No,” he said, “I couldn’t say that I do.”

“Then it’s just as I thought,” replied Harvey.  “I’ve been watching you—­you are an honest man, and you’re putting yourself to no end of trouble from the best of motives.  And unless I’m mistaken, you’re being used by men who are not honest, and whom you wouldn’t work with if you knew their purposes.”

“What purposes could they have?”

“There are several possibilities.  In the first place, it might be a ‘strike’ suit—­somebody who is hoping to be bought off for a big price.  That is what nearly every one thinks is the case.  But I don’t; I think it’s more likely some one within the company who is trying to put the administration in a hole.”

“Who could that be?” exclaimed Montague, amazed.

“I don’t know that.  I’m not familiar enough with the situation in the Fidelity—­it’s changing all the time.  I simply know that there are factions struggling for the control of it, and hating each other furiously, and ready to do anything in the world to cripple each other.  You know that their forty millions of surplus gives an enormous power; I’d rather be able to swing forty millions in the Street than to have ten millions in my own right.  And so the giants are fighting for the control of those companies; and you can’t tell who’s in and who’s out—­you can never know the real meaning of anything that happens in the struggle.  All that you can be sure of is that the game is crooked from end to end, and that nothing that happens in it is what it pretends to be.”

Montague listened, half dazed, and feeling as if the ground he stood on were caving beneath his feet.

“What do you know about those who brought you this case?” asked his companion, suddenly.

“Not much,” he said weakly.

Harvey hesitated a moment.  “Understand me, please,” he said.  “I’ve no wish to pry into your affairs, and if you don’t care to say any more, I’ll understand it perfectly.  But I’ve heard it said that the man who started the thing was Ellis.”

Montague, in his turn, hesitated; then he said, “That is correct—­between you and me.”

“Very good,” said Harvey, “and that is what made me suspicious.  Do you know anything about Ellis?”

“I didn’t,” said the other.  “I’ve heard a little since.”

“I can fancy so,” said Harvey.  “And I can tell you that Ellis is mixed up in life-insurance matters in all sorts of dubious ways.  It seems to me that you have reason to be most careful where you follow him.”