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322 you can't get me. I don't keep a telephone in my house for the convenience of every cursed fool that likes to ring me up, and I want you to understand that when"

"That you, Montague?"

"Oh, you're there, are you? Who the deuce are you, and what do you want?"

"I want to know how things are going on in the City. They tell me there's rather a crisis on the Stock Exchange."

The reception of this mild request was so lurid that it cannot be set down here, and among the expletives, Stranleigh gathered that the man at the other end of the wire, clad only in pyjamas, at midnight, in a cold hall towards the middle of an English November, did not care to answer a fool question from any blank, blank idiot that liked to call him up, and the tirade ended with the fierce inquiry:

"Who are you? Who are you, anyhow?"

"My dear Montague," said Stranleigh, "please do not boast. I dislike a bragging man. Pyjamas? You know very well you don't own pyjamas. I am told that every stockbroker has put his pyjamas in the pawnshop long ago. What's the matter with you? Why don't you instal American radiators in your hall, as I have all through my house. They diffuse a mild, semi-tropical influence that would counterbalance even such a frost as you've been having on the Stock Exchange. If