They were amongst the biggest agricultural implement importers at the Cape. Also he was interested in shipping news, and he had noted the arrival of the mail.

    'I thought I recognised you in the restaurant,' nodded Mr Frenchan; 'In fact I was sure!'

    'Huh?' said Anthony. Now he remembered the three men who had sat at the next table. 'Why, of course! I spotted you and couldn't place you.'

    'I suppose you made a lot of money in South Africa, like the rest of us?' Mr Frenchan resented his own share of good fortune if his tone meant anything. 'It's easy enough to make—I was happier when I was earning a few pounds a week. Money? Bah!'

    Anthony, who had never had enough money to 'bah!' at, was a little shocked.

    'Yes, I made about forty thousand pounds'—he shrugged his shoulders to intimate the absurdity of describing so insignificant a sum as 'money'. 'But I wasn't in Africa very long.'

    Mr Frenchan looked at him with a new interest. As the representative of capital, Tony was a possibility—as a capitalist, he was a proposition.

    'Do you know the Goldheims very well? I saw you were lunching with them.'

    'I don't know them very well,' said Tony, realising that this was a moment for candour. 'In fact, I met them more or less by accident.'

    'Smart fellow, Goldheim,' meditated the other, examining his cigar. 'He's in oil—worth a million. Maybe two millions.'

    'Dear Me!' said Tony, and to make conversation and at the same time secure a little data, he asked: 'Are you in London for long?'

    'For three or four months,' said the other with a grimace of dissatisfaction. 'I shouldn't be here at all if my poor foolish brother hadn't died.'

    Anthony wondered whether it was the folly or the poverty of the departed Mr Frenchan which so ruffled his host. Certainly one or the other annoyed him, for he was scowling.

    'A man has no right,' he exploded suddenly, 'no right whatever to indulge in eccentric charities. When a man makes a will he should dispose of his property so that it does not hold his relatives up to ridicule, contempt or malice. Envy—yes. But not contempt.'

    Anthony agreed.

    The hard faced man was blinking indignantly. The memory of his brother's folly apparently stirred all that was uncharitable in his nature. His underlip thrust out aggressively.

    'If he wants to leave a thousand to the Stockwell Orphanage, and a thousand to the London Hospital, and ten thousand to the Home for Providing Babies with False Teeth, let him do it! Personally, I never wanted a farthing of his money, neither I nor my family.'

    From which lofty declaration of disinterestedness, Anthony gathered that the late Mr Frenchan had not left his brother anything.

    'What Church do you attend, Mr Newton?' he asked unexpectedly, and Anthony, for a moment, was taken aback.

    'Primitive Methodist,' he said. If Anthony was attached to any sect at all, it was towards Primitive Methodism, the church to which he had been dragged every Sunday morning as a child.

    The effect upon Mr Frenchan was electrical. He sat back in his chair and stared at the young man for fully a minute.

    'Well, that's a most remarkable coincidence,' he said, slowly. 'You're the first Primitive Methodist I have met in this country!'

    Anthony was more than a little astonished. Primitive Methodism acquired a new importance. Never had he imagined this sect of his could provide anything in the nature of a sensation.... Almost his heart warmed to the brick chapel of his youth.

    What particular significance lay in the fact, Mr Frenchan went on to explain.

    'My brother Walter was a bit of a crank. I am not saying that Primitive Methodism is a cranky kind of religion, but Walter carried it to an extreme. He employed nearly two thousand hands in his business, and, if you believe me, sir, nobody had a chance of a job with Walter unless he was a Primitive Methodist. It is a fine religion, I daresay; personally I don't know very much about it. But you might say that Walter lived for the church, and was so bigoted that he could see no good in any other kind of worship. Now, I am sure, Mr Newton, that you, as a man of the world, do not agree that that was an intelligent view to take?'

    Anthony murmured his complete disagreement.

    'And because he held these eccentric views,' Mr Frenchan went on bitterly, 'he has put me to more trouble than anybody else has ever put me to in my life. I said to my lawyer: "Am I to sit here in London, year after year, looking out for cases of poverty amongst Primitive Methodists, in order to carry out the provisions of Walter's will? I'll be dashed if I do!"'

    He grew almost choleric, swallowed the remainder of his coffee savagely.