Chapter 4
THERE WERE unkind people who said that Mr. Leicester Crewe had found his name in a timetable. There were some who had a dim recollection of him in those down-at-heel days when he was one of the dingy crowd of hangers-on to the kerb-market, an object of suspicion in City police circles. In those days he was just plain 'Billy,' rather a flashily dressed man with no considerable capital, but with an uncanny knowledge of mining stocks.
Mr. Crewe was musing on those kerb days, the narrow streets behind buildings, the everlasting drizzle of rain, the yellow nimbus of street lamps showing through the fog, and hurrying bareheaded clerks.
He winced at the thought of it, and gazed gloomily round the handsome library of the house to which fate and circumstances had brought him. How long
