Ballantine was one of those picturesque figures appearing from time to time in the financial world of London, whose activities lend colour to the ordinarily drab record of commerce. He was, in the generally accepted sense of the phrase, one of the best known men in the City. That is to say, a large public was familiar through the papers with his outward appearance and that of his country house, his racing stables, his yacht and his herd of pedigree Jerseys. A smaller and more closely interested public knew something, though not as much as it would have wished, of his financial interests. In actual fact, the man himself was probably as little known as it is possible to be. He had no intimate friends and even his closest associates knew how far they were from possessing his full confidence. His origin was obscure, and if many people would have liked to penetrate the veil in which he chose to shroud it, there were more who contented themselves with prophesying, cynically or blasphemously, as to his future.

By the world in general, however, Ballantine was taken as what he appeared to be—a spectacularly successful business man. In a comparatively short space of time, he had risen from nothing—or at least from very little—to a position of genuine importance and even power. Such a career is never to be achieved save at the cost of a good deal of jealousy and detraction, and he had received his fair share of both. More than once there had been unpleasant whispers as to his methods, and on one occasion—the famous Fanshawe Bank failure of four years before—something louder than whispers. But each time the murmurs had died down, leaving Ballantine more prosperous than ever.

But now the whispers were beginning to be heard again in many places, and nowhere more urgently than in the little ante-room to Ballantine’s private office on the top floor of the great building. Here the affairs of the company were being discussed in low tones by two of its employees.

“I tell you, Johnson,” said one, “I don’t like the look of things. Here’s the Annual General Meeting not two weeks away, and the market’s getting jumpy. Have you seen this morning’s figures?”

“The market!” said the other contemptuously. “The market’s always got nerves. We’ve been through worse scares than this, haven’t we? Remember what happened in ’29? Well, then——”

“I’ll tell you another thing,” went on the first speaker without listening to the interruption. “Du Pine has got the jumps too. Have you seen him this morning? He was absolutely green. I tell you, he knows something.”

“Where is he now?” asked Johnson. “In there?” He nodded his head to a glass-panelled door labelled “Secretary”.