He began by dropping (in sporting parlance) a cool thousand on the
Jack Joel Selling Plate at Newmarket. On the next race he dropped a
cool five hundred, and later on in the afternoon a cool seventy-
five pounds ten. The following day found him at Lingfield, where he
dropped a cool monkey (to persevere with the language of the racing
stable) on the Solly Joel Cup, picked it up on the next race,
dropped a cool pony, dropped another cool monkey, dropped a cool
wallaby, picked up a cool hippopotamus, and finally, in the last
race of the day, dropped a couple of lukewarm ferrets. In short, he
was (as they say at Tattersall's Corner) entirely cleaned out.

When a younger son is cleaned out there is only one thing for him to
do. Roger St Verax knew instinctively what it was. He bought a new
silk hat and a short black coat, and went into the City.

What a wonderful place, dear reader, is the City! You, madam, who
read this in your daintily upholstered boudoir, can know but little
of the great heart of the City, even though you have driven through
its arteries on your way to Liverpool Street Station, and have noted
the bare and smoothly brushed polls of the younger natives. You,
sir, in your country vicarage, are no less innocent, even though on
sultry afternoons you have covered your head with the Financial
Supplement of The Times in mistake for the Literary Supplement, and
have thus had thrust upon you the stirring news that Bango-Bangos
were going up. And I, dear friends, am equally ignorant of the
secrets of the Stock Exchange. I know that its members frequently
walk to Brighton, and still more frequently stay there; that while
finding a home for all the good stories which have been going the
rounds for years, they sometimes invent entirely new ones for
themselves about the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and that they sing