For three years Roger St Verax had lived precariously by betting.  To be a St Verax was always to be a sportsman.  Roger’s father had created a record in the sporting world by winning the Derby and the Waterloo Cup with the same animal—­though, in each case, it narrowly escaped disqualification.  Roger himself almost created another record by making betting pay.  His book, showing how to do it, was actually in the press when disaster overtook him.

He began by dropping (in sporting parlance) a cool thousand on the Jack Joel Selling Plate at Newmarket.  On the next race he dropped a cool five hundred, and later on in the afternoon a cool seventy-five pounds ten.  The following day found him at Lingfield, where he dropped a cool monkey (to persevere with the language of the racing stable) on the Solly Joel Cup, picked it up on the next race, dropped a cool pony, dropped another cool monkey, dropped a cool wallaby, picked up a cool hippopotamus, and finally, in the last race of the day, dropped a couple of lukewarm ferrets.  In short, he was (as they say at Tattersall’s Corner) entirely cleaned out.

When a younger son is cleaned out there is only one thing for him to do.  Roger St Verax knew instinctively what it was.  He bought a new silk hat and a short black coat, and went into the City.

What a wonderful place, dear reader, is the City!  You, madam, who read this in your daintily upholstered boudoir, can know but little of the great heart of the City, even though you have driven through its arteries on your way to Liverpool Street Station, and have noted the bare and smoothly brushed polls of the younger natives.  You, sir, in your country vicarage, are no less innocent, even though on sultry afternoons you have covered your head with the Financial Supplement of The Times in mistake for the Literary Supplement, and have thus had thrust upon you the stirring news that Bango-Bangos were going up.  And I, dear friends, am equally ignorant of the secrets of the Stock Exchange.  I know that its members frequently walk to Brighton, and still more frequently stay there; that while finding a home for all the good stories which have been going the rounds for years, they sometimes invent entirely new ones for themselves about the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and that they sing the National Anthem very sternly in unison when occasion demands it.  But there must be something more in it than this, or why are Bango-Bangos still going up?

I don’t know.  And I am sorry to say that even Roger St Verax, a Director of the Bango-Bango Development Company, is not very clear about it all.

It was as a Director of the Bango-Bango Exploration Company that he took up his life in the City.  As its name implies, the Company was originally formed to explore Bango-Bango, an impenetrable district in North Australia; but when it came to the point it was found much more profitable to explore Hampstead, Clapham Common, Blackheath, Ealing and other rich and fashionable suburbs.  A number of hopeful ladies and gentlemen having been located in these parts, the Company went ahead rapidly, and in 1907 a new prospector was sent out to replace the one who was assumed to have been eaten.