And then it dawned upon Fyne that this was just it.

The great smash, in the great dust of vanishing millions! Was it possible that they all had vanished to the last penny?
Wasn't there, somewhere, something palpable; some fragment of the fabric left?
"That's it," had exclaimed Fyne, startling his wife by this explosive unseating of his lips less than half an hour after the departure of de Barral's cousin with de Barral's daughter.

It was still in the dining- room, very near the time for him to go forth affronting the elements in order to put in another day's work in his country's service.

All he could say at the moment in elucidation of this breakdown from his usual placid solemnity was: "The fellow imagines that de Barral has got some plunder put away somewhere." This being the theory arrived at by Fyne, his comment on it was that a good many bankrupts had been known to have taken such a precaution.

It was possible in de Barral's case.