Mr. Windlebird yawned.

"Not to put too fine a point on it, dearest, the game is up. The
Napoleon of Finance is about to meet his Waterloo. And all for twenty
thousand pounds. That is the really bitter part of it. To-morrow we
sail for the Argentine. I've got the tickets."

"You're joking, Geoffrey. You must be able to raise twenty thousand.
It's a flea-bite."

"On paper--in the form of shares, script, bonds, promissory notes, it
is a flea-bite. But when it has to be produced in the raw, in flat,
hard lumps of gold or in crackling bank-notes, it's more like a bite
from a hippopotamus. I can't raise it, and that's all about it. So--St.
Helena for Napoleon."

Altho Geoffrey Windlebird described himself as a Napoleon of Finance, a
Cinquevalli or Chung Ling Soo of Finance would have been a more
accurate title. As a juggler with other people's money he was at the
head of his class. And yet, when one came to examine it, his method was
delightfully simple. Say, for instance, that the Home-grown Tobacco
Trust, founded by Geoffrey in a moment of ennui, failed to yield those
profits which the glowing prospectus had led the public to expect.
Geoffrey would appease the excited shareholders by giving them
Preference Shares (interest guaranteed) in the Sea-gold Extraction
Company, hastily floated to meet the emergency. When the interest
became due, it would, as likely as not, be paid out of the capital just
subscribed for the King Solomon's Mines Exploitation Association, the
little deficiency in the latter being replaced in its turn, when