He was in receipt of about L500 every three months, as his bank-book proves.
This sum would represent five per cent interest on forty thousand pounds.
Now, considering your brother's position when he left you at Cape Town, and the fact that you cannot discover at his bankers or elsewhere any documents alluding to property or shares of any sort, one can scarcely help dismissing the hypothesis that this payment was the result of dividends or interest.

At any rate, let us put that out of the question for the moment.

Your brother received five hundred pounds every three months from some one.

People don't give money away for nothing nowadays, you know.

From whom and for what services did he receive that money ?" Mr.Sydney Barnes looked puzzled.
"Ask me another," he remarked facetiously.
"You do not know of any secrets, I suppose, which your brother may have stumbled into possession of ?" "Not I! He went about with his eyes open and his mouth closed, but I never heard of his having that sort of luck." "He could not have had any adventures on the steamer, for he came back steerage," Wrayson continued thoughtfully, "and he was in funds almost from the moment he landed in England.