Date: 1911-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Con-men; Financial swindles; Financial speculations
Description: A collection of short stories, concerning Financial Dealings of the Double-Dealing kind — shaky speculations, scams, swindles, and devious hijinks abound. But sometimes the underdog *can* come out on top. ~ ~ ~ ~ Barry Eric Odell Pain (28 Sep. 1864 – 05 May 1928) was an English journalist, poet, humorist and writer. During his lifetime, he was perhaps best known as a writer of parody and lightly humorous stories, but now is also noted for his tales touched with fantasy, horror, and the supernatural. He also wrote stories of mystery and suspense. His humor has been characterized by some modern
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain where copyright is “Life+90” or less, and in the USA

CITY CHRONICLES

BARRY PAIN

MobileRead Edition
2022

A collection of short stories, concerning Financial Dealings of the Double-Dealing kind — shaky speculations, scams, swindles, and devious hijinks abound. But sometimes the underdog can come out on top.

Barry Eric Odell Pain (28 Sep. 1864 – 05 May 1928) was an English journalist, poet, humorist and writer. During his lifetime, he was perhaps best known as a writer of parody and lightly humorous stories, but now is also noted for his tales touched with fantasy, horror, and the supernatural. He also wrote stories of mystery and suspense. His humor has been characterized by some modern critics as “a surreal forerunner to Monty Python.”

The contents of this book first appeared in the Windsor Magazine Dec. 1900 – Nov. 1901. This book is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+90” or less, and in the USA.

CONTENTS:

- A Modern Sibyl
- Greasewell’s House Paints
- The Code
- In the Lock
- Bluff
- Fifteen Per Cent
- Soames v. Farshaw
- An Exploration Enterprise
- “Unlikelies”
- Ruined
- The Fylmire Diamond
- The Biting of the Biter

CITY CHRONICLES

A MODERN SIBYL

Messrs. Granwick & Shine called it No. 42, Doddington Street, W. But their business—they were the furnishing trade, and had not been doing well at it of late years—only occupied the ground floor and a part of the basement. The upper storey was let as bachelor chambers, and had a separate entrance, and on the fanlight the house was described as Doddington Mansions. The remainder of the basement was the abode of the porter and housekeeper to the chambers. It was an old-fashioned house, occupying a good deal of ground space, with wide passages and staircase. There were nine sets of chambers altogether, and the names of the residents were painted upon a board in the hall. The last name on the board was S. Bywater Soames, Esq.

Mr. Soames was a man of thirty. His father had been a successful dentist, and his parents had intended that Samuel (that was his first name) should follow the same profession; they had educated him with a view to that end. They died when he had just completed that education, and six months later Soames sold his father’s practice, and intimated to his near relations that he had given up the idea of being a dentist himself. The only reason he could give was that he felt he had not the energy for it; he would have four hundred a year, and could live on that. They spoke of the possibility of marriage, and remonstrated with eloquence but without much hope; they had always said among themselves that Samuel was most extraordinary, and there was no knowing what he would do. He said that he should not marry, and that if he ever wanted more money he hoped that he would be able to make it without having to work for it. Soames was a fair-haired, clean-shaven little man, of almost boyish appearance; he always looked tired.

At the age of thirty—a critical age with many men—Soames woke up. He never gambled at all seriously; he had no vicious tastes, and believed he had no extravagant tastes; but for the last few years he had been spending a good deal more than his annual four hundred. He was not in debt, but he had begun to nibble at his capital. He paid a hundred a year for his chambers and went abroad for three months of the year; he entertained his friends, not ostentatiously, but well; his tailor was expensive; the booksellers sent him particulars of anything good on the Stuart period, and he could rarely resist the purchase; there was the Opera, of course, for Soames was rather by way of being a musician; and there were hansoms, for Soames never walked if he could avoid it. He still looked tired, but he was awake now. He noted with surprise how many things there were on which one’s money slipped away; but he did realise it, and he realised, moreover, that it is with capital as it is with cake—you cannot both eat it and have it. What was to be done?

Money can be made in two ways—by doing and by knowing—as Soames was well aware. The man who does, makes little and makes it slowly; the man who knows, makes much and makes it quickly. There are, of course, cases where the man both does and knows, but in those cases the knowledge is the essential factor. Knowledge without labour presented strong attractions to Soames. But not all knowledge has a commercial value; Soames was learned in the Stuart period, and knew something of heraldry and more of Wagner, but such things do not replace the thousands lapsed from one’s treasury chest.

There was also a possibility of economy. The chambers at Doddington Mansions might be given up, and Soames might live on two hundred a year until his finances were on a proper footing again. There were certainly bachelors in London who got along on two hundred a year, and among the very poor there might even be some who got along on less. But Soames thought of this with horror; he had got used to his comfortable way of life and he did not want to change it. It made him so depressed that, in order to recover his self-respect, he took a hansom to Hesketh’s to order some more clothes.

He happened to arrive at the moment when Hesketh’s manager was turning a client out of the shop—customers are “clients” at Hesketh’s. The customer was a tall, portly man, with a ragged, black moustache, and a very shining hat tilted back on his head; he was very angry and the manager was perfectly calm.

“We decline to make for you, and we don’t want to have you about the place. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

The customer blustered and swore badly. He was excited, his face was flushed, his eyes seemed to be starting out of his head. The manager took no notice of him, but escorted Soames into the shop.

“Very sorry, sir,” he said, “that you should have arrived just when that little scene was going on. Unfortunately, there was no avoiding it. Brought it on himself.”

“What was the row, Bland?” asked Soames. “Is that the way you treat us when we’re broke?”

“No, sir, no, Mr. Soames, I hope you don’t think that. That man’s worth half a million, and as far as his money’s concerned he’s all right. But he doesn’t understand the ways of a place like this. He comes here half drunk and uses the most offensive language; he loses his temper without any reason, for it’s not our fault he’s grown so stout. He’s Mr. Walter Chive, and one never heard of him till last year.”

“Do anything?” asked Soames lazily.

“Oh, yes, he’s one of the Anglo-Foreign Hotels Syndicate. Minting money, they tell me. Quick elevators, ice-water, servants not too formal, and everything to suit the foreigners visiting England. He’s a man who might have introduced a lot of valuable business, and I put up with him for a bit. The other day he was carrying on when Lord Carris came in. His Lordship said to me privately, ‘I wonder you let that filthy bounder into the shop at all, Bland.’ Oh, I was quite ashamed! What could I say? However, we’ve seen the last of him now. He came in today in his usual state, and began, ‘Where’s that fool Bland?’ Oh, I very soon showed him where I was. If we do lose the custom of his friends, it won’t ruin us.”

And then Soames refused a whisky-and-soda, lit a cigarette, and permitted patterns to be shown him. The incident mildly amused him. It seemed to him a queer thing that a man who was clever enough and knew enough to make money could not pick up a way of behaviour which would spare him the contempt of strangers that he met and the humiliation of being turned out of his tailor’s.

A few days later Soames came across this same Mr. Walter Chive again. Soames was coming slowly down the stairs at Doddington Mansions, drawing on his gloves as he went. Chive was in the hall at the bottom of the stairs, in earnest conversation with two other men.

“Well,” he was saying, “you’ve seen it yourselves, and you like the position. G. and S. have only two years to run, and we know for a fact that they will be glad to clear out any time. Shearing’s going the deuce of a pace and will have to part with something soon.”

“Vell, vell,” said a middle-aged man whose appearance as well as his accent bore evidence to his nationality, “dat may be ver’ true. But vy do nod Aston and Blaig know somedings? And vot about dese?” he tapped with his stick on the board on which were the names of the residents.

“Yearly agreements, all of them. Aston and Blake are old-fashioned people. They did this property for his father before him, and they think things are going on the same way for ever. Besides, he won’t tell ’em before he must.”

“I must think over it,” said the third man, who was a handsome old gentleman of a rather military appearance.

And then Soames passed through them and got into the cab which was waiting for him. He told the man to drive to his club. He was now in possession of some information that interested him. It seemed that the Anglo-Foreign Syndicate had cast their speculative eye on No. 42, Doddington Street. If they purchased it from Lord Shearing, they would probably pull it down, and put up a nice little hotel, five storeys higher, on the site. They expected that they would have no trouble in getting Granwick and Shine to part with their lease, and the occupants of the residential chambers had only yearly agreements. He thought things over, and realised that there was the knowledge which might be profitable. He called up through the trap and altered the direction of his cab. A few minutes later he was sitting in Mr. Blake’s room at Messrs. Aston and Blake’s offices, and Mr. Blake, a gentleman of venerable and kindly appearance, was asking what he could do for him.

“Well,” said Soames, “I want those chambers of mine redecorated, if you don’t mind.”

“By all means,” said Mr. Blake. “Redecorate them.”

Soames explained that he had wanted rosewood panelling in the three rooms, with a deep frieze above. And he wanted painted ceilings—he knew an artist who was just the man for it. “I thought the landlord paid for these things,” he added plaintively. He looked the image of an ignorant boy who has had his enthusiasm damped.

Mr. Blake was much amused. He became patronising and informative. He used the phrase, “When you have lived a little longer,” with great effect.

“Well,” said Soames, “there’s no help for it; as you won’t do it, I must. Only, how am I to know that you won’t turn me out as soon as I have spent my money on the place? It would be quite fair, wouldn’t it?”

“It would be quite legal,” said Mr. Blake. “But it is not the sort of thing we should dream of doing.”

“But suppose Lord Shearing died or wanted to sell the place, and it passed out of your hands. I’ve only got that thing I signed, and that only lasts a year. Couldn’t you fix it in some way so that I couldn’t be turned out? You see, this will cost me a lot of money; you said so yourself.”

“His Lordship is not at all likely to sell. Yes, I know there are some ill-natured stories about, but we attach no importance to them. However, you are a good tenant, if I may say so, Mr. Soames, and we’ll make an exception for you. You shall have a lease. Do you know what a lease is?”

And Mr. S. Bywater Soames was so forgetful of the sacred character of truth that he said he was afraid he was not very clear upon it. A week later he had a seven years of his chambers.

That was precisely what he had gone to Mr. Blake to get. If he had asked for it straight out, he have aroused suspicions. Also, it was no part game to pose as the hard-headed business man. His youthful appearance had been in his favour, and he had played up to it. He was regarded by Messrs. Aston and Blake as a luxurious young ass, and this estimate of his character might very possibly come in useful.

He went back to his chambers and thought it over. If Lord Shearing and the Anglo-Foreign Hotels Syndicate never came to terms, he would be in the same position as before, with the exception of the money that he laid out on the redecoration of the chambers. A sum had been named, and its expenditure had been made a condition of the lease. But Soames had the right to sub-let to an approved tenant. He could go elsewhere and economise, or he might be more successful in his next attempt to make use of knowledge commercially.

If, on the other hand, the property were sold—then, he thought to himself with some pleasure, the fun would begin.

•   •   •

A month later Messrs. Granwick and Shine, crushed by the competition of Tottenham Court Road, went suddenly and savagely bankrupt. They owed a year’s rent at the time. Lord Shearing wrote a letter to Messrs. Aston and Blake on the subject which made that venerable firm feel extremely sick. Mr. Blake said sadly that his Lordship’s father would never have written such a letter.

A few days afterwards Lord Shearing’s brown filly, Fiametta, annoyed by three false starts, stopped and kicked when she should have been otherwise engaged. Lord Shearing watched the performance through his field-glasses. His smile was a trifle metallic and artificial; but, considering the amount that the mare was losing for him, it did him some credit that he was able to smile at all. When, a few days later, Messrs. Aston and Blake wrote to him that the Anglo-Foreign Hotels Syndicate had offered to him a fair price for No. 42, Doddington Street, his laconic Lordship wired back the simple word “Sell.”

To Messrs. Aston and Blake, Mr. Walter Chive, representing the Syndicate on this occasion, came as somewhat of a shock. He swore heavily and he smoked in the office; he spoke with marked disrespect of Lord Shearing; and he was always suspecting Messrs. Aston and Blake of sharp practice that had never entered their innocent and venerable heads.

“Now,” said Mr. Chive, after a little preliminary conversation, “all this talk won’t buy the baby a new frock, will it? Let’s get to business. Give me your lowest price, and I’ll say if we will buy. And for goodness’ sake don’t try anything on with me; I don’t like it.”

“We received this letter from his Lordship this morning,” said Mr. Blake. “You will see that he states in it the amount which he is prepared to accept.”

Mr. Chive read through the letter and put it down. Then he got up, turned his back to Mr. Blake, walked to the window and looked out. The price asked was less than the Syndicate had been prepared to give. After a minute’s reflection Mr. Chive turned round again.

“Well,” he said, “this plunger of yours has got his mouth open quite wide enough. However, we’ll buy his shanty at that price if we can have immediate possession.”

“There is a lease, and there are certain yearly agreements. But I do not anticipate any difficulty. These people are all old tenants of ours, and I think we can deal with them on a footing that would not be possible for a stranger. Besides, they are gentlemen who would not care to reside at the Mansions while your builders and house-breakers were at work. The noise and dust would be unpleasant to them; in fact, I feel pretty sure that they will be glad to have the chance to leave at once. I will guarantee that you shall have possession in nine months.”

“You might as well talk about nine blooming years,” said Mr. Chive. “Look here, I’ll put my cards on the table and let you see how we’re placed. There’s a bit of rivalry going on. Some people have picked our brains and are going to put up an hotel or two on our lines. They’ve got a site in this neighbourhood, and they’ll begin to clear it next week. Our hotel has got to be ready before theirs is. See?”

“Of course, it is possible that we might be able to get the tenants out before the nine months. I only say that we will not guarantee to give you possession before then. But we will do our best—you may depend on that.”

“I don’t depend on that or anything else. Let’s see the lease. And what sort of a chap has got it? The yearlies can be managed, anyhow.”

After a good deal of talk it was arranged that the Syndicate should make the best terms they could with Soames and the other tenants, and that a sum of £500 should be deducted from the purchase price.

When all was signed and settled Mr. Blake permitted himself to ask, “And if Mr. Soames refuses to go?”

“He won’t. I shall put it to him in a gentlemanly way.”

“But if he won’t be persuaded?”

“A little ready money has a great effect on these young asses about town. You’ve told us the kind of fellow he is.”

“And if even that doesn’t work?”

“I shall cut off the water, the electric light, and the staircase.”

“I’m afraid you did not read that lease very carefully.”

“Can’t I do that? Oh, well, I’ll find something else. Soames be hanged! He’s not going to block us.”

•   •   •

The two men whom Soames had seen in conversation with Chive in the hall at Doddington Mansions were Mr. Eugene Mandelbaum and Mr. Farshaw. Mr. Farshaw was more attractive in manner and appearance than the other two men. He had a truthful blue eye and bore himself erect; there was something simple and soldierly about the old gentleman. He had probably made more money out of burst straights than any other poker player in the kingdom.

He had no difficulty at all in persuading the yearly tenants at Doddington Mansions to hasten their departure. He was extremely sorry, but the place had to come down. There would be workmen all over it, and dust and noise everywhere. The porter and housekeeper would be turned out of the basement at once, and there would be nobody to attend to the chambers. His Syndicate regretted—really regretted— all the inconvenience and discomfort they were causing. Was there anything that they could do? That was all he wanted to know.

With every appearance of generosity, and very little actual expenditure, he got them all to go. But he did not get Mr. S. Bywater Soames to go.

Mr. Farshaw called upon Mr. Soames one morning by appointment. He was afraid Mr. Soames was not very glad to see him.

“On the contrary,” said Soames, who looked very tired, “I’m charmed. I had been expecting to hear from the Syndicate.”

“What I wanted to see you particularly about was the panelling in these rooms. We understand from Mr. Blake that you put this in quite recently at your own expense.”

“That is so.”

“The other directors and myself wish to say that if you care to remove this panelling, they are not disposed to press their rights in the matter. In fact, we shall be having some experienced workmen of our own in the place in a fortnight, and if you like they shall take it down and. pack it for you free of charge. We can do that for you, and of course, as we are making the chambers absolutely uninhabitable, we will cancel the lease and decline to take any rent that may be still due. Is there anything else we can do? People who keep hotels cannot afford to make enemies, and I am afraid that at the best we have given you a good deal of inconvenience.”

“Not at all,” said Soames politely. “And I shan’t have to trouble your men about that panelling, because I am not leaving.”

“Mr. Soames,” said Farshaw, “I can see that you are angry with us, and I confess that it doesn’t surprise me. This is hard lines for you. But do you think you are well advised in making bad worse? Let us suppose that you stay. It may give us a little trouble, but it will make no difference in the end. The hotel will be built, and your chambers will remain, just in the middle of the kitchen and the servants’ quarters. You will have to use the servants’ stairs and entrance. Will that be pleasant for you or for friends who come to see you? I say nothing of what you will have to go through in consequence of the building operations.”

“It won’t be pleasant, but I am going to stay. I shouldn’t have thought that the first-floor front was the best place for the kitchens and servants’ bedrooms, but—”

“One moment, Mr. Soames. Now, suppose that you have the good sense to make up your mind to go. I will sit down now if you like and give you a note to the manager of one of our hotels in Jermyn Street. You can stay there for a week or a fortnight while you are looking for other chambers. You will get special attention and comfort there, and there will be no bill—you will be the guest of the Syndicate. We will do your removal free of charge, and hand you our cheque for twenty-five pounds to cover any incidental expenses. In your case we would sooner err on the generous side than on the other. Now, I’ll write that cheque and the note to our man in Jermyn Street, and I’m sure—”

“No, thanks,” said Soames. “I don’t feel that I know your Syndicate well enough to be its guest. Besides, I don’t want to leave.”

“Well,” said Farshaw, “I’ll let you think it over. In less than a week our men will be at work. If you change your mind then, let me know, and I will do the best I can for you. But, of course, I can’t promise that I shall be able to get the other directors to offer you the same terms then that they do now.”

“Quite so,” said Soames. “Good morning.”

The next three months were occupied with a series of minor hostilities. The Syndicate pulled down as much of No. 42, Doddington Street, as they could, carefully watched on behalf of Soames by a builder and a solicitor, and that builder and solicitor worried the Syndicate a good deal. They got letters of solemn warning from that solicitor about once a week. Soames thought that rather more dust and rubbish fell on him as he went up and down the stairs than was absolutely necessary, and he did not like the Syndicate’s builder’s foreman’s smile; so be ordered in a case of the most atrocious whisky that could be bought for money. Next morning bricks appeared to be falling against Soames’s door, and an iron girder was being beaten with a hammer continuously until the dinner-hour. Then Soames came out into the passage, found a couple of the men, and suggested that they might like a drink. He handed out four bottles of the destructive whisky to them, and Nature did the rest. Five men were too hopelessly drunk to work that afternoon, and the foreman did not smile any more. The builder required measurements which could only be got by entering Soames’s chambers; Soames refused to allow the man to come in. The Syndicate’s builder’s foreman then punched Soames’s servant’s head, and was given the usual option; Soames distributed the rest of his paralysis brand of whisky and got a new servant; the Syndicate’s architect went mad; and things came to a deadlock.

It was Mr. Eugene Mandelbaum who was next deputed by the Syndicate to interview Soames. He looked like a cross between a philosopher and a pig, and appearances did not belie him.

“I am a man of few vortz,” he said to Soames.

“I beg your pardon?” said Soames.

“I mean, I am a man that has not moch to zay. And vot I zay is, how moch for you to go?”

“Three thousand pounds,” said Soames.

“My frient, I am not kom here to shoke.”

“That’s all right. I’m not joking. My offer’s good for twenty-four hours.”

Mr. Farshaw was of the opinion that the three thousand should be paid. “He’s on top and he knows it. While we thought he didn’t know it, it was all very well to try to shunt him on the cheap. But it’s no good to go on fighting when you’re beaten. He’s done us, and it can’t be helped.”

But Mr. Farshaw’s opinion did not prevail. It was decided to offer half the amount; the offer was refused by return of post.

Soames had made up his mind quickly, but not easily. He was playing a big game, and it was quite possible that they might turn obstinate, in which case he would lose everything. Fifteen hundred pounds was a large sum to risk. But the offer was a sign in itself that the Syndicate was weakening, and he guessed that the weakening would be a gradual process. Also the workmen, whose intoxication he had so obligingly financed, were not ungrateful; they had talked to Soames and had told him what they knew. Soames was aware that the new hotel could not be erected without a certain iron girder which would have to pass through the middle of his chambers. Besides, the lust of battle had entered into him. He felt now that he would sooner lose all than give in.

A month passed, during which the Syndicate’s builder did next to nothing, and the Syndicate’s rival’s builder did quite a good deal. It was during this month that the hair of Mr. Eugene Mandelbaum began definitely to go grey. Soames came out of his chambers and wandered about the site of the proposed Doddington Hotel; he examined the excavations and asked the foreman why he did not get on. And all this time Farshaw was urging the other directors to give Soames his price; three thousand was, after all, a very small sum in comparison to what they were in danger of losing.

Mr. Eugene Mandelbaum observed, “I should like to haf that yonk man as a pardner,” and reluctantly assented to Farshaw’s proposal.

Mr. Walter Chive said, “Then I suppose it’s no good my sticking out. The only thing that I stipulate for is that I hand him the cheque myself; and then at least I shall have a chance to tell him what I think of him. And I will, too.”

“I should nod blay aboud with dat Zoames, if I vos you,” said Mandelbaum. “It vill be no goot. He is a deffil.”

“And he’ll find he ain’t the only devil about, too. I’ll give him a dressing down that will take some of the edge off his enjoyment. You leave him to me. My belief is that if I had gone at the first we should never have been put in this infernal hole.”

So Mr. Walter Chive went, with the Syndicate’s cheque for three thousand in his pocket. He had seen a good many men, and they had most of them “taken another” with him, and he was not quite at his best that morning.

“No, thanks, I won’t sit down,” he said in answer to Soames’s invitation. “I’ll say what I got to say standing, Mr. Bugwater Soames, or whatever your name may be. If there were law and justice in this country you would be on the treadmill. You’re asking three thousand; if it were a railway company, with Parliamentary powers to buy, I doubt if you would get three hundred. You’re a swindler, a dirty swindler. You may find yourself in the dock on a charge of conspiracy yet. It’s blackmail, that’s what it is. However, the worse the vermin, the more one is willing to pay to be quit of them. Here’s your three thousand. Sit down and write the receipt, and be out of these premises before this time tomorrow.”

Soames had been lying lazily back in his chair with his eyes closed. He now opened them.

“My price was three thousand; it is now six thousand, and in twenty-four hours it will be twelve thousand. If a cheque is sent, I shall leave on the day it is cleared, and not before; and the cheque must be sent by post or by some decent messenger.” He paused and rang the bell. “Now get out. I can’t have drunken swine like you about the place.”

The bell was answered by Soames’s new servant. Soames had seen the necessity of getting someone who would not be likely to have his head punched. The new man was a quiet, steady-looking fellow, but he was powerful and clever with his hands.

At first Mr. Chive was unable to speak. He gesticulated with a clenched fist. Then he burst into a flood of stuttering blasphemy and obscenity. He seemed smitten with a desire to say all the bad words he knew in the shortest possible time. Saliva trickled from one corner of his mouth down his chin.

Soames jerked his thumb in the direction of Mr. Chive and turned to the servant. “You can clear that away, James,” he said.

James approached. Mr. Chive caught up his hat. “Threat of assault!” he cried. “By God! you’ll pay for it! You’ve let yourself in for it now!” He had more to say, but by this time James had shut the door on him.

•   •   •

Soames received a cheque for six thousand next morning, with a very polite letter from the Syndicate. He cashed the cheque, warehoused his furniture, and went down to the sea to rest.

The Doddington Hotel is now completed and doing very well. Mr. Chive, who, after all, decided to do nothing about that threatened assault, has retired from the directorate. It is always better to retire than to be thrown out.

GREASEWELL’S HOUSE PAINTS

A very nervous condition characterised the speculative and investing public the moment.

A few months before it had been tickled by the papers into coming in for a boom; and it had been caught in a slump. Then it wiped its forehead and said that nothing was safe except the old-fashioned respectable concerns that gave you five per cent. in a good year. Next week Leslie’s broke and altered the suicide statistics. All this was noted by Mr. Alfred Peach, millionaire and company promoter. In the present state of the markets he felt especially glad that he had never been caught out yet. He was spoken of with respect. His companies were all of them flourishing; they were all dividend-payers, and some of them paid a very fair dividend indeed. As long as they did that, no inconvenient questions were likely to be asked as to how Mr. Peach had made his money. As a matter of fact, his system had always been to give the public as much as he thought good for them, and scoop the rest. Some people diddle the public; Mr. Peach thought this a mistake, except within reasonable limits—you may want them again. There were one or two inventors who walked about the City, raging against Mr. Peach; but in the City they allow a special extra broad margin for inventors. They go on their knees to be financed; terms are fixed and the financier adheres to them; and then the inventors think they have a right to go about grumbling. The inventors did Mr. Alfred Peach no harm, and the public confidence in him did him a lot of good. In spite of the nervous tension, Mr. Peach had no doubt that the public would come into his “Greasewell’s House Paints, Limited,” as soon as it had a chance, seeing that Mr. Peach was the chairman, and remembering that Mr. Peach had done them good aforetime. That, indeed, was the general opinion, and the stags prepared to be busy.

Alfred Peach was a dried-up man of fifty-five, taking little or no pleasure in the things that money can bring, and immense pleasure in making more money. He was fond of chess, but chess is cheap. He was no sportsman, and had never owned a yacht or a racehorse. He was very abstemious, more from temperance than conviction; he smoked one cigarette per diem after dinner and drank a very little claret-and-water. Personally, he cared nothing for splendour and luxury, and he did not want a title; but he meant to be a baronet one of these days; his wife wished it. He mostly did what his wife wished.

One morning, shortly before the public appearance of “Greasewell’s House Paints, Limited,” Mr. Peach was in his office in conversation with Mr. St. John Bulstrode, of Somnerley Park, Weybridge. The two men were strangers to each other, but Bulstrode had written to Peach with reference to an electrical invention, and this interview was the result. Bulstrode was a clean-shaven man of thirty-five, tall, good-looking, and well turned out. Peach looked almost insignificant beside him.

“Well, now, Mr. Bulstrode,” said Peach, “what have you got and what do you want? First, what have you got? I don’t know anything about electricity; so put it simply. Excuse me if I seem abrupt, but my time’s precious.”

“Certainly. My invention gets electricity direct from heat. At present you get only fifteen or twenty per cent. out of your coal.”

“Where’s the rest go?”

“Up the chimney and in the latent heat of steam. My invention gets seventy-five or eighty per cent. out of the coal.”

“I see. That cuts down the coal bill. What other bills does it run up instead?”

“None. My generating plant is cheaper in the original cost, as well as in the working, than any other.”

“Pardon me if I don’t seem enthusiastic. You see, if this were all right, it would be such a very, very big thing. Now, I get a lot of things brought me; and it’s my experience that most of the very big things are all wrong. To come to the second point, what do you want?”

“As I said in my letter, I want you to take this thing over and sell it to the public. I’m not a man of business; I was never brought up to it. I’m an electrician that has worked on one thing for ten years and has got it. Of course, I have private means, or I could not have done it; electrical experiments on a large scale are costly. Now I have got it, I want to sell it well. There you can help me; you understand company business and you have a great name with the public.”

“And, putting it plainly, where should I come in?”

“If you took the thing up, you would come in as partner on even terms.”

“It’s worth looking into. Where’s it running?”

“At my place—Somnerley Park, Weybridge.”

“When could I send a man down?”

“Whenever you like, if you come as well. Not at all, if you don’t, You see what I mean? It is, as you say, a big thing. For that reason—and I don’t say you’re wrong—you suspect it already. If your own engineer comes down without you, you will be but little more convinced than you are now, and the thing will drag on. Come down yourself; don’t leave me alone with your man for a moment; that’s what I want. I mean the examination and report to be beyond the possibility of a doubt. I am offering you a half share in a thing that is going to revolutionise the electrical business and decrease the price of the electric current something like three hundred per cent. But, understand me, Mr. Peach, I am not offering this for nothing. It must have your time and personal attention from the start. What have I to gain if you do come down and find the thing rotten?”

“Nothing, that I can see. You don’t want money, and the thing is finished instead of being still in the air—two points in which you differ from the ordinary inventor. Still, you might be a crank, just a plain crank, deceiving yourself. You don’t look that type, though. I don’t see how I can come; I’m too busy; I’ve got this company on my hand just now. … Well, I don’t know; if I did, it would have to be an evening. … But you might just as well let me send an expert.”

“You may bring twenty experts with you, if you like.”

“Now you’re getting simply obstinate,” said Mr. Peach.

But his mind was already made up. It was something more than an ordinary big thing; it was gigantic. Apart from his profits from the partnership with Bulstrode, the mere knowledge that such an invention was completed would turn to millions. It was a chance that could not be let go. And, now that he had decided that, his one fear was that somebody might get in before him.

“Well, then,” he continued, “if you must have your own way, would Tuesday night next week do?”

“Perfectly.”

“I can’t make it quite a certainty. Our lists (that’s Greasewell’s thing, you know) close on Wednesday at noon. By Tuesday afternoon I expect to know that everything is all right. Barring accidents, I shall be there. What time?”

“If you could meet me at Waterloo for the five ten, we might travel down together. Of course, I shall be only too glad to put you and your experts up for the night. I think we can make you comfortable. The only thing I don’t like is asking you to work after dinner.”

“That’s very kind of you. I never mind work; I don’t do much sleeping. It will be all right about my being at the office here early on Wednesday morning?”

“You shall breakfast any time you like.”

“That’s good. Then, if my man likes the look of your machine, we can go into the question of the patents and so on afterwards. In a fortnight I should be able to give my time to you almost entirely.”

“I’ve got counsel’s opinion on the patents already. I thought you would want that first.”

“No, I begin at the beginning. First, is the thing worth patenting? Then, are the patents good? See?” Mr. Alfred Peach rose from his seat. “Well, Mr. Bulstrode, you may expect me at Waterloo on Tuesday. I shall be there by five.”

“That is, barring accidents,” said Mr. Bulstrode, also rising.

Mr. Peach smiled. “To tell you the truth, we are not very much afraid of them. We haven’t underwritten a single share. The public have always followed me, and they’ve always had something. Leslie’s was a bad business, and I wish it hadn’t happened. Of course, we knew in the City that they were weak a year before. But this is quite a different thing, and I don’t fancy Leslie’s will hurt us. In fact, though I don’t often give tips, you might do worse than to apply for a few Greasewell’s, and resist the temptation to sell them at a profit on the day they’re allotted. Let me see, is there anything else? If I want to leave my engineer for a day or two to look into things a little more thoroughly—”

“Certainly, he can stop until he’s satisfied.”

“Thanks. And, look here, whom else have you taken this thing to?”

“Nobody else. You are the only man we want.”

“That’s all right. And—well, I shouldn’t talk much about it, if I were you. You see, it can’t do any good, and might—”

“Of course. You may depend on me. Address at the Cecil till Tuesday. I don’t return to Somnerley Park till then, but I’ll write to my engineer to have everything ready. Good-morning, Mr. Peach, and many thanks for your kindness in coming down.”

“Not at all; I hope it will be to our mutual advantage. Good-morning, Mr. Bulstrode.”

Then Bulstrode went, and Mr. Peach spoke through the telephone to his old friend Twyford, the electrical engineer, and arranged to lunch with him that day. At luncheon Mr. Peach said—

“I want you to go down to Weybridge with me next Tuesday evening, to look at something for me and report on it.”

“Very well; what is it?”

“Probably the usual mare’s nest. In that case I lose nothing but a little time and your fees. If it’s not that, it’s the biggest thing I ever heard of.”

“I must put the fees in proportion,” said Twyford jokingly.

“If it’s right, you won’t want any fees. You’ll make a fortune. I’ve got to let somebody else in because I don’t know anything about electricity, and I’ve picked you because I think you’re a man I can trust. But, mind you, I don’t want anybody besides you let in. Two’s enough. You must come prepared to stop a week at the place, and perhaps longer. Tell ’em at your office and at home that you have to go down into the country on business for a few days, and you’ll let ’em know when you’ll be back. You meet me at Waterloo at five on Tuesday. You’ll be there?”

“Yes, I suppose so. You’re very mysterious.”

“Don’t you mind that, Twyford. If this is right, you won’t regret a little preliminary mystery. And, in any case, you’ll be no loser. Two o’clock! Bless my soul, and I’ve got six hours’ work before me! Good-bye. See you on Tuesday.”

Mr. Alfred Peach hurried away. Twyford, watching his departure, wondered if Peach had ever trusted anybody. Mr. Peach himself would have confessed that he had not often been guilty of that weakness. But he had trusted somebody that morning—to wit, Mr. St. John Bulstrode.

•   •   •

Mr. Bulstrode lunched at the Hotel Cecil; his companion was a man of quiet manners and gigantic frame, whom he addressed as Bill; and Bill addressed Mr. Bulstrode as Jeff or Captain. Bulstrode did most of the talking.

“He’s in mortal fear that somebody else will get hold of it,” said Bulstrode. “You may take it for a certainty that we shall only have the two to deal with. Peach and his tame expert. Peach thinks he’s going to make another fortune, and he is not a man that cares to share things more than he can help. You, myself, and the Frenchy can manage the two all right.”

“There’ll be a week of it, Captain, and one has to sleep sometimes. If we had Jim as well—”

“Won’t do. Jim must be here to watch the market and operate at the right time. Besides, there must be no traceable connection between him and us. Your wife and Berthe can help at plain watching, so long as there’s one of us in call. If all goes well, we shall be able to take a long rest afterwards; you must not mind a little discomfort for a time. It’s a pretty big coup you know.”

“It is. About the hottest thing you’ve done yet. I wasn’t thinking about discomfort, though. My only idea was that it would make us sick if we got him and then didn’t keep him.”

“We shall keep him. My fear is that we shan’t get him—he’s a very shy bird, and if he gets any suspicion he’ll be off, and we shall have lost our trouble and a good deal of money besides. To start with, you meet us at the station with the carriage. For Heaven’s sake don’t forget that you’re my coachman! Your livery’s all right, and as you’ve got nothing to say, you can’t go wrong there; but there are some little points. For instance, when we first come up to the carriage you will want to look round to see what sort of a man Peach is. Don’t. Look straight before you and touch your hat like this. See? The Frenchy will be all right as butler, because he was used to that kind of work before—”

“Before he got into bad company,” said the big, quiet man, with a grim smile.

“Quite so. Besides, anything odd in his manner would be put down to his being a foreigner. Berthe’s rather a mad little devil, and I’m not sure she won’t make a fool of herself when she’s waiting at dinner. You and the Frenchy must coach her well when you get back. Remember that the house must look as if it were inhabited by a wealthy bachelor of position, of refinement, of scientific tastes. You’d better buy a few pounds’ worth of really good works on electricity—they must be recent books—and put them about; for, though Peach knows nothing, his expert will know a lot.”

“Won’t he bowl you out?”

“Not a bit. I decline to talk shop till after dinner. It is not until we are smoking our cigars after dinner that they are to find out that there is anything wrong. Your wife’s a clever woman, luckily, and will cook to perfection, and she will see that the table looks right. Think out each detail, practise, rehearse. I want the thing to go smoothly—artistically, in fact.”

“You’re a little doubtful whether we shall get him. I’m afraid he or the expert will get away, or manage to get a message sent, unless we take the rather forcible measures to which you object. Frenchy is quite sure we shall get him and keep him; but then he’s afraid of something else.”

“Yes,” said Mr. St. John Bulstrode. (And if that was not his real name, neither was it Jeffrey, neither was he a captain.) “Frenchy is not used to doing things on the large scale yet. He thinks that the bigger the coup, the greater the risk must be. But it is not so. In fact, the total risk is less. The little sneak-thief has to be always at it in order to make a living, and we know what happens to the pitcher that goes often to the well. The man who conducts an operation, as we are doing, with a view to influence the price of a stock in his favour, can afford a long rest. If we get him and keep him, I don’t admit even the possibility that we could be caught.”

Then the waiter entered with the coffee and found the two men discussing with animation the new piece at the Gaiety.

•   •   •

On Tuesday afternoon Mr. Peach and Mr. Twyford found Mr. St. John Bulstrode waiting for them on the platform at Waterloo. Mr. Peach was in good spirits. “Greasewell’s House Paints” had already been subscribed twice over.

“If poor electrical engineers had any capital to play with,” said Twyford, “I’d have some more of them.”

“Ah!” said Peach, “Mr. Bulstrode here is going to give us all more capital than we shall know what to do with.”

“That will be for Mr. Twyford to decide,” said Bulstrode. “Perhaps he will find that there is nothing in my little invention, and that I have merely wasted your time. I have been very busy, and have only just posted my modest application for the House Paints myself.”

“The funny thing is,” said Peach, “that some fool is selling them. I fancy I know who it is, and he’ll burn his fingers over the job. It’s not the first time he’s come up against me, but I am pretty sure it will be the last.” The little man looked quite fierce.

But Mr. Peach did not know, though he thought he knew, who was selling. Mr. St. John, who had not, as a matter of fact, applied for any shares, really did know: the shares were being sold under different names on behalf of the Bulstrode gang.

Mr. Bulstrode’s brougham was waiting for them at Weybridge Station.

“I shouldn’t much care to have a row with your coachman, Mr. Bulstrode,” said Twyford, after they had got in and driven off.

“He’s a big man, isn’t he? Fortunately, he’s not pugnacious—one of the quietest of men, really.”

“He’s driving us very fast,” said Mr. Peach rather nervously. “You are sure he has the horses under control?”

“Quite. I always keep fast horses. You see, Somnerley Park, my little place, is a good many miles from the station, and a long drive is apt to be tedious. As a rule, I have the dog-cart and do the driving myself. By the way, this is a neat little thing I bought at Waterloo. Seen it? Opens just like a pocket-book, and takes no more room.”

It was a pocket chessboard; the pieces were so arranged that they could not be upset by the jolting of a carriage; and if a game were interrupted, the board could be folded up and put in the pocket without disturbing their position.

“I’ve always been meaning to get one of those. It’s a capital idea.”

“You play, then?”

“Yes; I’m not first class, but I’m very fond of it. But for the fact that Twyford would think us unsociable—”

“Oh, don’t mind me!” said Twyford. “I’ll watch the game; or it is not impossible that I may take a nap.”

The game was prolonged, both men playing very carefully; it was still unfinished when the carriage drew up.

“Here we are,” said Bulstrode.

Twyford awoke and stretched himself. “Had a good game?” he asked.

“Excellent. We must finish it tonight.”

The front doors were thrown wide open, and a servant of slightly foreign appearance came down the steps to the carriage.

•   •   •

Dinner was over. It had been a simple but pretty little dinner, well served, but for the fact that the parlourmaid who helped to wait on them had a curious tendency to smile when anybody said “electricity.” And the word was used quite a good deal, for it was at dinner that Twyford was first told the nature of the invention that he was to examine. He at once became as keen as mustard, slightly incredulous, and full of questions. It seemed to him that Peach’s one daily cigarette took an unusually long time to finish this evening, and even then Mr. Bulstrode lingered, sipping his coffee and talking chess. At last he seemed to notice Twyford’s impatience.

“You’re eager to get to work, I see. Very well, we’ll give you ten minutes start of us. The machine’s running in the annexe; my man will show you the way. You’ll find it very simple, and wonder that you never happened to think of it yourself. My engineer’s there to tell you anything you want to know.”

Twyford did not need much persuasion. As soon as he had gone, Mr. Bulstrode turned to the sideboard and picked up the pocket chessboard that they had used in the carriage. “The fact is,” he said, “I can’t get this game of ours out of my mind, and I’ve got an idea that I see my way now. Do you mind?”

“To tell the truth, it’s been rather haunting me, too. Let’s see. It’s your move.”

They played on in silence for a few minutes, and then Mr. Peach, after a careful scrutiny of the board, rose from his place. “You’re too strong for me,” he said; “it’s your game.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Bulstrode meditatively, as he cut off the end of his second cigar, “it’s my game.”

“Well, now,” said Mr. Peach, “it is not for me to suggest, but perhaps Twyford will be expecting us. Eh?”

“I can answer for it that he will not. Pray sit down again, Mr. Peach. There are one or two explanations with regard to this electrical invention of mine which I should make before we go any further. Won’t you sit down again?”

Mr. Peach looked somewhat surprised, but sat down. “Well?” he said.

“Firstly, there is no electrical invention for you or Mr. Twyford to see. My knowledge of electricity is elementary, and I have never invented anything. If I had invented anything, I should not have brought it to you. If I had offered it to you, I should not have offered it on those terms.”

“Are you mad? What on earth does this mean?”

“No, I am not mad. I wished to get you away from London at this juncture for a week. I have got you. You will remain here for a week—”

“I shall do nothing of the kind,” exclaimed Mr. Peach excitedly.

“Don’t interrupt me, Peach, or you may make ms angry. You will remain, because you will not be able to get away. You may shout for assistance, for instance. The house stands a quarter of a mile back from the road, and it is a lonely road. You will not be heard. Similarly, you will not be able to bribe my servants to send a telegram for you or let you out. For, just as there is no invention, so also there are no servants. Those you have seen are my partners, playing the rôle. Your friends will not be able to trace you when they miss you, for you have left the address, ‘Somnerley Park, Weybridge.’ Just as there is no invention and there are no servants, so also there is no Somnerley Park. The house you are in is called something quite different, which I will not bore you with. Also, they will not find you at Weybridge, because this house is twelve miles away from Weybridge. It was a long drive, as you might have noticed if you had not been wrapped up in your game. I do not want any vulgar violence, and, so long as you do not try to escape, there will be none. You will not be locked up or chained, and I will make you as comfortable as I can. But one or other of us will always be near you, and any one of us would much sooner shoot you then let you escape.”

“This is not just a joke?”

“It has its amusing side,” said Mr. Bulstrode, “but that is accidental. From your point of view it is deadly earnest.”

“Now, look here. I’ve got to be back in town tomorrow. If it’s not a joke, it’s money. I’ll give you a thousand and my word of honour not to put the police on—not to say a word to a soul about it. I’m a man of my word. One of you can go up early tomorrow, send a wire for me—which you can read—to my office, and cash the cheque over the counter at ten. When he’s got the money he can wire back to you to release me; so that I don’t go until the money’s actually in your hands.”

“You still seem to think I’m a baby, Peach. I wouldn’t trust you, but we can leave that point out; the absurdity is in talking about a thousand. What do you think it has cost me to get you? I’ve had to take this place furnished for three months—couldn’t get it for less— and we shall not occupy it for three weeks. Do you think a man can live at the Cecil for nothing? And don’t think that I am fool enough to spoil a big coup by any silly little minor swindle; every penny is paid. Then there are four of us—apart from the two women—three here and one in London; and the one in London is forced to spend a lot to cover his tracks, as you will discover later when you try to track him. We four expect at least two thousand five hundred each, after all expenses are paid. If you could put down eleven thousand, now, I might let you go and take my chance. But you yourself would be a fool to do it. Sit here quietly till your week’s out, and you won’t lose a penny. Other people will, but you will be all right.”

“Don’t you see?” moaned the millionaire, his head between his hands. “The public’s as nervous as a cat just now. Mysterious disappearance of the chairman of Greasewell’s House Paints! They’ll drop like lead, and they were a quarter premium this afternoon and will be better tomorrow until the news comes. Look at the disorganisation, too.”

“The other directors will rub along all right without you.”

“They’re all fools—that’s why I picked ’em; they can only do what they’re told.”

“Your fault; not mine. The shares will drop, of course, and there are likely to be some queer stories about you. But what does that matter to you? Behave nicely, and we will let you go back in a week. You and Twyford will tell the story of the way you were kidnapped. Then the reaction will set in and the shares will go bounding up again higher than ever. In fact, it would be idle to deny that it was in view of such fluctuations in the market that we arranged to get you here and keep you here a little.”

Mr, Peach glared at him for a few moments in silence. Then he sank back in his chair. “What an infernal scoundrel you are!” he moaned. “This is criminal conspiracy, you know. And when you’re caught, you won’t like it.”

“Don’t talk rubbish, Peach. I don’t take immense trouble to make money unless I am pretty sure that I am going to keep it when I have made it. And do behave nicely; for if you don’t, I shan’t, and you won’t like that. Don’t, for instance, use offensive language.”

There was a long pause. Mr. Peach sighed. He looked broken and dejected. “What have you done about Twyford?” he asked at last.

“A friend of mine—who acted as our coachman tonight—has in all probability just finished explaining the situation to Twyford; and, unless I am mistaken, Twyford will accept it. He is a commonplace man and will see that he is losing nothing; he is here on your business, and you will have to pay him. If he attempts to get away, he risks losing a good deal—his life amongst other things. I am sorry to inconvenience him in any way. But you must see for yourself that we have no choice.”

Mr. Peach stared blankly before him and said nothing. Then his shifty eyes roamed round the room. Suddenly he made a dart for the window, flung it open, and yelled “Murder!” at the top of his rather small voice. A dog barked. Mr. Bulstrode laughed. Nothing else happened.

“Now’,” said Bulstrode, “you have been behaving like a child and must be treated like one. You will have no breakfast tomorrow morning. Take my advice and let us make your enforced stay here as little unpleasant for you as possible. Accept the situation; come into the library with me and see if you can’t improve your game at chess. At present you are only good second class.”

Mr. Peach paced the room once or twice.

“All right,” he said at last. “I’m done. Come and show me where I went wrong in that game.” And he followed his captor into the library.

But when he got to his bedroom that night the idea of escape again occurred to him. He was not an athletic man, and he did not fancy the idea of letting himself down from the window by a rope extemporised from his sheets and blankets. But what else was there to be done? He pushed up the window very softly and looked out; from below came the deep growl of a dog. He pulled the window down again hurriedly—that was no good. But his door was not locked from the outside. Later, when they would have got tired of watching, and satisfied themselves that he was safe for the night, it would be worth while to reconnoitre.

At three in the morning he dressed himself, put his boots under his arm, opened his door noiselessly, and stole out. The passage was quite dark, but there seemed to be a glimmer of light coming from the end where the staircase was. When he reached the staircase he saw that the light came upward from the hall. He went to the balustrade and peeped over. Below him in the hall sat the pretty French girl who had helped to wait upon him at dinner. She was no longer dressed as a servant. She wore a somewhat elaborate tea-gown, and was smoking a cigarette and reading a yellow-covered book. On the low table beside her were a cigarette-case and ashtray, a small bottle of champagne and a glass, an electric reading-lamp, and a revolver. Mr. Peach watched her for a minute or two, and then—as stealthily as before—crept back again to his room.

Mr. Peach had no breakfast that morning, and he did himself unusually well at luncheon. At that hour, in London, the newsboys were shouting, “Mysterious disappearance of a millionaire!” the evening papers were selling remarkably well, and people were tumbling over each other to sell “Greasewell’s House Paints.”

•   •   •

A week later Mr. Bulstrode’s carriage, driven by the same coachman as before, drew up in the road about four miles from Weybridge Station. The blinds were drawn. Mr. Bulstrode stepped out, followed by Mr. Alfred Peach and Mr. Twyford. The latter was in the best of humours and had taken the whole thing as a splendid joke.

“Sorry we can’t take you any further,” said Mr. Bulstrode politely. “However, it’s a pleasant morning for a walk, and you will have no trouble in finding your way. Your bags will be waiting for you at Waterloo. I’m afraid my hospitality has been of rather a rough order, but under the circumstances we couldn’t have any regular servants, you see. Good-bye, both of you. Your friends will get a surprise when they play chess with you again, Mr. Peach.”

“Good-bye,” said Mr. Peach sulkily. “Come on, Twyford.”

“Good-bye,” said Twyford. “Awfully obliged for those electrical books.”

“You’re most welcome,” said Mr. Bulstrode. “They are of no more use to me.”

Twyford turned to the coachman. “I forgot to settle over our piquet last night. Twenty-three and six, wasn’t it? Good-bye.”

The gigantic coachman took the money, touched his hat solemnly as if he had received a tip, and then burst into a hearty laugh. Twyford also laughed. Mr. Peach did not. “Come on,” he called impatiently.

•   •   •

Scotland Yard succeeded ultimately in finding the house to which Mr. Peach had been taken. When they found it, it was in charge of a policeman and his wife, who were acting as caretakers. They were paid by the owner by arrangement with the tenants, who had been compelled to leave before their term was up. But though that owner gave the detective every assistance in his power, they never found Mr. St. John Bulstrode or any member of his gang.

“Greasewell’s House Paints,” which ran down to ½ during the period of Mr. Peach’s disappearance, in spite of the energetic protests and declarations of the other directors, rose to 2¾ within a fortnight of his return. If the Bulstrode gang are taking a much-needed rest, it is probable that they can very well afford it.

THE CODE

Charles Stetsworth was the senior partner in Marion and Stetsworth. There had been no Marion in the firm for the last one hundred and twenty years, but the old style was still kept up. They were South American merchants, and if you had asked a man in Mincing Lane he would have told you that Marion and Stetsworth were all right. So they were.

All the same, Charles was in a bad temper, and was rude to Eustace, his younger brother and junior partner, and had good reason for it.

The trouble had begun with coffee. The firm had regular consignments from Santos, taking lots of 2,500 to 8,000 bags at a time, and Santos drew on them against the consignments. That was quite usual, and all right when coffee was seventy and Santos was drawing forty; but it was much less right when coffee shaded down to fifty-three and a fraction and Santos still drew as before. And the market went on falling, and Marion and Stetsworth went on holding, and Santos went on drawing, and the gloom went on settling. A point was reached when the firm was holding much more coffee than a platonic friendship for Santos justified; and they cabled to the effect that they were feeling rather tired, and if they were to hang on Santos would have to send margins. And the Santos people (always regarded as a solid firm) replied that their heart was broken in three places, but they were not sending any margins. I am not giving the exact words of the cable, but that was the general drift. Nor will I give the exact words that Charles used when Marion and Stetsworth unloaded their holding on the market at twenty-eight. Eustace observed that he had never thought much of the Santos people and had said so; this would have been easier for Charles to bear if it had not been the absolute truth. As it was, Charles told his brother to go to the devil, which, we all know, is not the way to speak.

Then there was quinine. That looked cheap at one-and-nine, very cheap. The falling-off on the shipments of bark from Java was very marked. Well-informed people were saying that the supply was giving out. So Charles bought 50,000 ounces on the distinct understanding, with himself, that quinine was to jump to four shillings in the course of a fortnight. No sooner had Charles settled himself comfortably in quinine than the bottom dropped out. Java was doing very nicely, thank you, and would be happy to send you enough bark to fill the Albert Hall twice over (or thereabouts) and still leave enough for the hospitals. Marion and Stetsworth sold their quinine at eleven-pence. Charles became very despondent; he reduced his luncheon in the Commercial Sale Rooms to the most ascetic proportions, and said, with a sigh, whither he thought legitimate commerce had gone. And his younger brother Eustace reminded him that he had always said that quinine was rotten and there were too many weak “bulls” messing it about. I do not say that Eustace was not trying; he was the kind of man who would have made Job himself irritable.

Charles certainly had reason for his bad temper. It was generally considered that he knew enough to come in when it rained, and he prided himself on his acuteness, and yet he had been caught twice, and in his own special articles. The temper passed and left him limp. He had the lowest opinion of anything and everything. When Eustace came in and said that it might be as well to sell a little cotton, he drearily assented and said he would see to it. And then Pilbrick came in and talked to him. Pilbrick was a friend. Pilbrick said that he was glad to see that coffee was improving again. Charles Stetsworth grunted. Pilbrick went on to inquire airily if Charles had been doing anything in quinine lately. Charles lied and said he had not. He added that he was just going to luncheon, and, much to his disappointment, Pilbrick said that he would go with him. As they passed through the clerks’ office, Charles remembered that he wanted to sell 10,000 bales of cotton, and gave the order to a clerk. “Wire Winshed, Liverpool. Code-word, ‘adept.’”

The clerk repeated the words as he wrote them down. “Winshed, Liverpool. Adept.”

So Charles Stetsworth went out with Pilbrick, and with the conviction that he had just sold 10,000 bales of cotton; and so he would have done if he had consulted the code-book instead of trusting to his own memory. The word which he should have used was not “adept,” but “transept.” The mistake would have mattered less if the word “adept” had not been in the code-book; but it was in and it conveyed to Mr. Winshed, of Liverpool, an order to buy 100,000 bales of cotton on behalf of Messrs. Marion and Stetsworth.

The day passed without Charles discovering his mistake. He put on his hat and overcoat, said “Good-night” to his brother, and took the train to Blackheath, where he lived. After dinner, as he sat engaged in the innocent occupation of cracking a walnut, he astounded his wife and daughters by springing to his feet and rushing up-stairs to the library. It had suddenly occurred to him that “transept” was the word he should have wired; he had a copy of the code-book in the library, and he was naturally anxious to find out at once what was signified by the word “adept.” He came down again, and said that he had been to see if he had put out his letters for the post, and he went on with his walnut. His wife and children found him rather silent for the rest of the evening. It is difficult to be very gossipy and cheerful when you are calculating the chances of your own bankruptcy. Cotton was too dear, he had not a doubt of that, and, owing to this appalling blunder of his, he had just bought a very large quantity of it. The question was, what would it fall to before he could get out? A heavy and sudden drop would be very serious indeed; and that was exactly what he and his brother had both expected when they made up their minds to sell.

Charles never talked business at home under any provocation, and he did not break through his rule now. But he only got one hour’s sleep that night, and during that hour he dreamed that he was attempting to file his petition, and was having bricks thrown at him by his brother Eustace, who was making excellent practice at a short range. He came down to breakfast looking sick and melancholy, and picked up his copy of the Times.

Could he believe his eyes? There, staring him in the face at the head of a column, were the lines—

SUDDEN FROST IN
THE
COTTON STATES.

CROP ALMOST TOTALLY DESTROYED.

He read the item out to his wife, and she said how sad it was. He fully agreed with her. It was very sad for cotton-growers in Florida; it was also very sad for anyone who wanted cotton to go cheaper. But it was a long way off being sad for Marion and Stetsworth, who by a slip of memory had bought 100,000 bales the day before, and would have the pleasure of seeing the price go up like a rocket all day. Before the end of breakfast Charles had almost persuaded himself that this amazing piece of good fortune was due entirely to his own miraculous prescience. And he had quite made up his mind that that was the impression which Eustace should be led to take of it.

An hour later he found Eustace at the office with a very long face, and asked what was the matter. Eustace asked him sarcastically if he ever read the paper.

“Well,” said Charles, “what is it?”

“Only the entire crop destroyed, and we sold yesterday.”

“I didn’t know you meant that. Yes, I saw it; in fact, I was expecting something of the kind.”

“And yet you went and sold 10,000 bales yesterday!”

“Oh, no! You suggested something of the kind, I believe, and I was rather inclined to agree with you at the time, but things came to my knowledge afterwards, and I sent a buying order instead.”

“Good! How much?”

“Hundred thousand. I should have consulted you, but you were out at the time, and—”

“Oh, don’t apologise. You can do some more of the same sort if you like. All the same, it’s a biggish gamble.”

“I wish you wouldn’t use that word,” said Charles rather irritably. “I never gamble. I should not have dreamed of giving an order like that unless I had known that there was no possibility of my information being wrong, especially without consulting you. I cannot tell you how I got the information; I’m bound by my word not to tell you. I may say, though, that it was a source that I may never have at my disposal again.

After this Charles retired to his room with dignity. He gave no outward signs of his satisfaction with things in general; but at luncheon he did a thing which is sometimes done in the Commercial Sale Rooms by those who feel that they have deserved it, and occasionally by those who know that they have not. He gave an order in a low tone of voice, and the waiter brought him the tankard which he generally brought to Mr. Charles Stetsworth at luncheon. But this time the tankard was filled, not with bitter, but with Pommery ’89. By such dark and surreptitious ways do the successful in the Commercial Sale Rooms avoid the appearance of insolence, ostentation, and indiscretion.

IN THE LOCK

You must know that Reginald Barton Hove, aged thirty-five, fell madly in love with Delia Muir, aged nineteen, and told her so in one of the flirtoria at the Garstin-Yenn’s dance. His proposal being curtly refused, he stammered out his sense of his awful presumption and an appeal that her decision might not be taken as absolutely final. He would gladly accept any conditions.

Miss Muir shrugged the prettiest shoulders within the cab radius and looked at him thoughtfully and critically. “You may call at Erciston Square tomorrow afternoon if you like, and I will tell you what I think about all this. You will hear some plain speaking, and I don’t think you will like it, Mr. Hove. But still, if you want to know the position exactly, I can tell you it.”

If this was not distinctly encouraging, it was not final rejection, and lovers are grateful for very little. Hove called at the Muirs’ house in Erciston Square on the following afternoon, and was received in the boudoir by Delia. Her figure was exquisite; her face was poetical and divinely lovely; her dress and the arrangement of her beautiful hair were Fashion’s last and most entrancing work; and her manner was quite unperturbed.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Hove. Tired? Oh, no, thanks. I’m not old enough for that yet. Tea? No? You won’t mind if I have some. Now, if you’ll sit just there we can talk. It’s impossible to have long discussions at a dance, isn’t it?”

Mr. Hove said he liked talking to her anywhere and always. It was not quite right, but it was the best he could do at the moment. She continued in her gentle, almost sleepy voice—

“I must tell you at the start that I do not love you, Mr. Hove, and shall never love you in the sense you understand the word. I shall never, by any possible chance, love any man like that. Do you wish me to go on?”

“Yes, you must go on.”

“After all, what reason is there why a woman should love a man? There may be, and often are, scores of reasons why a woman should marry a man, but I cannot see how she is to love him. Speaking frankly, men are not attractive. The strong men are generally ugly; and the idea of marrying any man who is not strong is revolting. Other women may think and feel differently; I don’t doubt it. But that does not affect you, of course; you want to know about me. If you didn’t, by the way, it would be inexpressibly comic for a girl of nineteen to be talking to a man of thirty-five in this way. It’s rather funny, anyhow. … I am modern, you see. And the modern girl has knowledge, foresight, and self-respect; and all those qualities, especially the last, are dead against the possibility of her forming a romantic attachment to any man. But she may marry; and in happy cases long and sympathetic association may bring her a real, though not passionate, affection for her husband. One gets fond of a cat, even, if it comes in to breakfast every morning with one. Have I insulted your sex enough? If I go on I shall insult you, too. I cannot tell you the position truly without saying things that sound brutal—perhaps really are. Shall I be polite instead, and talk to you about the people we know—as I should be doing now but for the absurd things you said so seriously last night?”

“No. Tell me all truly. I never supposed you were like the ordinary women. Tell me everything and do not spare me.”

“Just as certainly as I shall never love, I shall marry. Like most passionless women I have ambitions; they can never be satisfied unless I marry. You can have nothing without paying for it. Well, I am prepared to pay. Does that shock you?”

“One does not get shocked nowadays. I hate you for being so hard and cynical; and I love you.”

“I don’t want to be hard or cynical, but I do want to speak the truth. I know of many marriages that have taken place; and I do not know of one—not one—where love was the only consideration on both sides. And I know of many where even the pretence that this was so was not kept up. I give myself; in return I must have power.”

“You have it already.”

“That is a fair answer, and it is quite true. I can do what I like with most men. I know it; it is all calculated—calculated to an eyelash. I enjoy it. And it will go on dwindling until it has vanished altogether; kittens become cats, you know. I must have another kind of power—political power, social power, the power of money. And I must have it through my husband. If he has not got it at the time that I marry him, I must feel certain that he will get it. That brings me to the main question—why should I marry you?”

“I will tell you anything you like to ask about myself.”

“I shall not need to ask very much. Men like to talk about themselves, and I like to please them. At different times and in a fragmentary way you have told me a good deal about yourself, and I have put the fragments together. Also I have observed on my own account. You are in business in the City, a business that was your father’s and your grandfather’s before him. And you are not doing as well with it as your father was.”

“No. But then times have changed.”

“True. And methods should change, too.”

“The fact is, I hate the business. I leave things to Hewetson. It gives me more money than I want to spend as a bachelor, and so I don’t trouble much now. It would be different if I were married.”

“In the normal course you would be discussing this sort of thing with my father, and not with me. My correct pose would be to talk about love, think business horrid, and say that money didn’t matter. But I am modern, and not sentimental. If I married you, as things stand at present we should have to live in the suburbs. I have seen too much of the people who live in London and cannot afford it. We should have what the suburb would call quite a nice house, and three or four acres of garden. I should drive a fat pony in a governess cart. You would go to the City every day. In good years we should have a month in Paris, and in bad years a fortnight at Ramsgate. I see it all biographed before me. It would be quite comfortable and utterly hopeless, leading to nothing. And you would be sorely tempted to leave business early to get back to your dear little home. Hewetson—obliging man—would always tell you that there was nothing to be done which he could not very well see after; because, you see, it is the dream of Hewetson’s life to be made a partner.”

“How on earth do you know these things?”

“I talk to the people who know whenever I can, and I do not practise the piano. Am I right about Hewetson?”

“Absolutely, I should say.”

“Well, he would be made a partner, and we should have him to dinner to celebrate it, and discuss afterwards whether he was vulgar or not. It wouldn’t much matter, because by that time I fancy we should have grown fairly vulgar ourselves. I ask you, why should I change my present mode of life for one so infinitely inferior?”

“You paint it in the darkest colours. I never knew you were so ambitious, though. I’ve known you for a year. I suppose I could not ask you to come down to that.”

“The really ambitious people do not like purposeless chatter about their ambitions; that is why I did not speak before. I have a purpose in talking about them now. If I thought you were the really strong man—the man who would have to arrive—I would marry you now, if you had not a pound a week for us to live on. What I will not stand is comfortable stagnation; and, unfortunately, you—a clever man—seem to like it.”

“I suppose I have been slack.”

“Never mind the conventions; let me speak plainly—you have been slack and self-indulgent. You read of immense fortunes and high place, but you never regard them as concerning you personally. They belong to another set of people. You never use your energy to get the great fortune. You never try to fit yourself for the high place, or dream of filling it. Or, if you do, you never go beyond the dream. No; you jog along and leave what you can to Hewetson. You are lazy and as self-indulgent as a decent man can be nowadays. How could we marry? Why do I care—and I do care immensely—for my beauty? Because it is a means towards power? Why must I marry a strong man? For power. Power, power! There’s nothing else in this world worth living for; if I did not think that I should get it, I would die tonight!”

She stood up, excited, her eyes bright, breathing quickly, wonderfully beautiful. She was quite obviously sincere, and she was only nineteen.

Hove also rose. “You would make a dead man ambitious,” he said. “But is it of any good for me to talk? You have said a good many hard things about me—all of them true—but you have left out one of the hardest. I am thirty-five, an age when men are beginning to find it difficult to change their ways. But you say that you think that I am clever; it does not amount to much; we are all clever nowadays. Still, I should like to say this. If you will marry me, Miss Muir, I will give you what you want; I will get it for you; and I will make you love me, whether you will or not.” His habitual diffidence of manner had vanished.

“I like,” she said thoughtfully, “to hear a man speak with decision. Would you have liked to be praised? I could have said one more thing about you; I heard it from the Garstin-Yenns; when a boat upsets in a lock you are a very useful man to have about.”

“I don’t want to talk about that; the Yenns exaggerate; anyhow, that is not anything which leads to anything.”

“Courage? I happen to like it.”

“I love you,” he said passionately. “You don’t even know what that means yet; but you shall. If there is anything that you like in the least about me, give me time; give me a chance; tell me what to do.”

Delia Muir sat down again and remained for a moment or two without speaking. “Yes,” she said at last, “I will marry you, if your acts are as good as your words. Do not see me for six months. Come back then and tell me what you have done. You are fond of social life: cut it. You have got to work, to find the way to power, and lay the lines that lead to it. One does not get there in six months, but one can start.”

They talked on for another hour. Her ideal of marriage, as she explained it, was an association of two well-bred, educated people, with a mutual aim. He did not argue against this, though it sounded perhaps a little chilly. Experience would expand that ideal.

“Come back in six months, then,” she said. “Tell me then what changes you have made, and on what projects you are working. Do not be afraid of boring me with figures and business details—that kind of thing does not bore me in the least; besides, if one wishes to arrive somewhere, it is silly not to study the road. And then I will tell you if I will marry you. Good-bye.”

•   •   •

Hove spent the next few days in a close examination of his financial position, settling with himself what was the next thing to be done, mapping out plans for the future, concentrating himself. He had caught Delia Muir’s fever. The indolent and rather extravagant life that he had lived hitherto filled him with disgust. He had been asleep and had missed his opportunities. It had taken a young girl of nineteen to wake him up. He had connections who might ultimately be of use to him, but the first lever that he meant to touch was money; after all, money was a power in itself.

He reflected that (with an occasional exception for a drunken genius) the people whose word matters, who play the really big game and win it, are water-drinkers. He had never been an intemperate man, but now he drank water only. He abandoned late hours, dined out very seldom, and never touched a cigarette until after dinner. He came early to the office, stayed late, and worked hard. Within two weeks he had dismissed two clerks and got to know the truth about Hewetson. Hewetson was an excellent fellow, hard working, trustworthy, and valuable from his experience; but he was not fit to have the charge of men, because he was too easy, and he was just a little bit of an old woman; he was safe, but timorous, afraid of assuming a responsibility.

The business began to feel the clever, energetic man at the back of it. But on the usual and legitimate business lines progress was necessarily slow. Hove was looking out for a coup. He did not wish to go into a syndicate, and therefore the article that he tried to corner would have to be within his own means. It should not be an article that from its perishable nature would perhaps force him to sell when it was to his advantage to hold. It should be an article for which there was no good substitute, and one in steady demand.

He was thinking over one or two possibilities one morning when Hewetson came in. “Some time ago, as you will remember,” said Hewetson, “you bought a little lot of Turkey galls at my suggestion.”

“Certainly,” said Hove. He did not really remember. It had happened in the days when he generally assented to Hewetson’s suggestions and saved himself trouble.

“Well,” Hewetson continued, “I can get ten shillings a bag better than when we bought, and we hold two hundred and fifty bags. Would it be as well to take the profit, Mr. Hove?”

Hove thought for a minute. “I’ll decide tomorrow and let you know,” he said. Hewetson looked a little surprised as he went out.

Turkey galls are sent to us from Busorrah, in the Persian Gulf. The bag contains two hundredweight. If you buy Turkey galls—rather more than there are, for instance—at forty shillings the hundredweight, and can sell at twelve pounds the bag, you will be much cursed and highly respected. You will also have made a profit. But the trade is chiefly in the hands of Armenians, and their friends say that the Armenians are not slothful in business; their enemies put it more strongly than that, and make allusions to the cunning of a cart-load of monkeys. Also, it is as well to remember that you are not the only man in the City of London, and that you may tumble up against somebody else and hurt yourself.

Hove reflected on these things. Turkey galls are practically imperishable, and he would be able to wait as long as his financial position permitted. They produced tannic acid, and he rather fancied that tannic acid was connected with the textiles. Well; what the textiles want, they must and will have. Syrietta, an Armenian gentleman and Hove’s correspondent, had said that the crop was almost sure to be very short. The rains had been delayed, and in consequence the galls had fallen before they were in a ripe state. So far as he could gather from Smith’s list, the stocks of galls held in London were unusually small. That was an indication. It was not infallible, of course; private warehouses would make no return, nor, for that matter, will some of the others, as you will know if you deal in essential oils. But Turkey galls are indisputably not essential oils. Hove came to the conclusion that it might perhaps do.

In the course of the next week he made numberless inquiries and interminable calculations. He collected, so far as he could, all his resources, and gave Hewetson orders that scared him badly. He interviewed his bank manager and got some very interesting but slightly disappointing information as to what banks would do and what they most emphatically would not. Finally, he resolved to take the plunge.

His information as to the crop was accurate. His calculations as to the stocks held in London were fairly correct. But Hove was not destined to succeed this time. He saw where he was caught just in time, and only just in time. Galls, as has already been said, are practically an imperishable article. When crops of record abundance kept prices low, certain intelligent Armenians kept their Turkey galls back and waited till a bad year put the price better. They took this opportunity to unload their back numbers, and were very much obliged to some gentleman in London who, by his persistent buying, kept the thing up much longer than it could otherwise have done. The crop was short; but the supply was not. Hove had taken on very much more than he could carry.

Hewetson, who had had dreams of partnership, was in a deplorable condition. His nerve had all gone. He could see nothing but ships—whole fleets of ships in a thick, endless line—steaming for England, and all heavily laden with nothing but Turkey galls. He could neither sleep nor eat. Ordinarily the most sober of men, he began on occasions to drink heavily. On occasions, too, he lost his self-command and his temper, and used language to Hove for which a few days before he would certainly have been thrown out into the street. Hove checked him and he became penitent; then Hove said he had better go away for a holiday for a while, and Hewetson replied that if the ship was sinking, he was not a rat.

There came the final day. The two men met in the morning, but Hewetson was practically useless for business purposes. He moaned and bewailed. “They’ll put this down to me,” he said. “They all know what I was in this firm, and they’ll say I got you into it.”

“I shall tell a different story,” said Hove, white and patient.

“They won’t believe you. No; we’re broken, and it’s worse for me than you. No one will look at me. I’m ruined for life. And after all these year’s I’ve worked! It was in this very room where we are now that your father, only a few weeks before he died, held out great hopes to me. I took a pride in the firm. Not one of the biggest, but good repute for three-quarters of a century is something. And now we’re broken, and (if I may say so without disrespect, sir) all through your silly foolishness.”

“Listen to me, Hewetson,” said Hove. “I do not think we are broken. It is impossible to say for certain, but I do not think so. I shall know before the end of the day. I will tell you what I am going to do, but there are one or two other things to say first. If you had come into my father’s room at half-past ten in the morning, smelling of liquor as you do now, and used the language to him that you have used to me, and shown your utter uselessness in an emergency as you have been exhibiting it this last week, I don’t think he would have held out any great hopes to you. No, don’t speak; I don’t want any apologies. I want you to pull yourself together. I also want you for an hour or two to help me get out some figures. Then I am going out; there are several people that I must see. I may not be back till late; but when I come back I shall know where we stand. It may be seven or eight before I am back at the office; I suppose you will be here?”

“Yes, Mr. Hove, I’ll wait.” Hewetson passed one hand across his forehead. “I’ll do the best I can with the figures. And I’ll stick to the firm to the last. But you must excuse me, Mr. Hove. I’m not so young as I was, and I’m not used to this kind of thing. I think my nerves have gone. But I’ll do the best I can.”

“That’s all right,” said Hove kindly. He was angry with Hewetson, but at the same time he was sorry for him.

“And if any questions are put to me, I suppose I had better keep a cheerful face and say we’re all right?”

“Not at all,” said Hove. “Look just as doleful as you do now, and if anybody tries to pump you, I want you to imply—not say, but imply—that we’re absolutely broken over this deal. You may even go so far as to apply for a similar post to that which you hold here. Don’t trouble to think. Don’t ask me to explain. Just do what you’re told. And don’t touch drink again today. Now, then, we’ve not got a moment to spare; I want those figures by twelve, if possible.”

Hewetson was visibly impressed, though he had no idea of what Hove was driving at. While Hove was with him he seemed to have recovered his spirits somewhat. He was always clever at figures, and he was of great service in getting out the statements that Hove required. But the moment that Hove had left the office he broke down again; he went out and whimpered and boozed; and, in so far as he gave the impression of blank ruin, he exactly served Hove’s purpose.

Hove went out and interviewed, in rapid succession, a number of men who were clever, but did not think they had been sent into the world to help Hove. He asked some of them for time, and others for a little financial assistance; he pointed out to all of them that if they would not help he would be compelled to throw the whole of his tremendous holding of galls on the market, and the price would go to nothing and he would be ruined. They gave him sympathy and good advice, but they did not give him anything else. And as soon as his back was turned, they went out and sold a bear of galls, and considered that they were on velvet. If a man goes mucking the market about, and trying to corner a thing that is too big for him, he has only himself to thank for disaster. And yet Hove’s spirits rose considerably from these refusals. They were precisely what he had expected and part of his game. He spent hours in creating and encouraging bears of Turkey galls.

It was at half-past five that he called on old Jevon, of Jevon and Bast, a firm of considerable strength and importance. This was Hove’s second move in his game.

“And what’s the popular tip today?” asked Hove airily.

“The tip is, sell Turkey galls. I’m busy. Give ye five minutes.”

“I think I can show you the position in that time,” said Hove, becoming serious at once. He took from his pocket the statements that he had prepared that morning; he had not shown these at his other calls.

At the end of five minutes old Jevon rang his bell sharply. “I don’t see anybody else today. Don’t care what their business is. See? Engaged with this gentleman.”

The clerk withdrew, and the two men went on talking earnestly. It was nearly eight when they parted. Hove took a hansom hack to his office to convey the good news to Hewetson.

It was very simple. Everything is anticipated in the City. Hove’s smash and a consequent fall in galls had been anticipated. And, as sometimes happens, it had been too much anticipated; there was every reason to believe that there was a considerable bear movement among men who were not very strong. More bears would come in on the following day, when Hove began to sell. And what would happen if Hove did not go on selling? That was the question that he put to old Jevon.

If you sell what you have not got, you must in the end buy it from someone else. From whom were the bears to buy. There would be but small shipments, if any, from Busorrah. Hove had soaked up all that the Armenians were likely to part with. Therefore the bears would have to buy from Hove. He had got far more than he could carry, and in the normal course he would have been compelled to sell. If he could afford to hold, those anticipatory bears would be put in a very tight place, and the figure at which they were let out was for Hove to settle.

Jevon had already formed the opinion that the selling of galls was being overdone, and from his own information he expected some American buying. He did not hesitate long in deciding that some kind of partnership with Hove in this deal would be profitable.

But it took time to settle terms. When they were settled they were magnificent terms for Mr. Jevon; they were good enough for Hove; they saved him, even if they gave most of the profits that he had hoped for to another man.

Hove passed through the empty outer office into his own room. As he entered, Hewetson rose from the desk behind which he had been crouching and fired a revolver at Hove. The shot missed him handsomely. Three seconds later Hove had the revolver, and Hewetson was on the floor.

“Get up,” said Hove, as he slid the cartridges out of the revolver. He listened at the door to see if the shot had been overheard. If so, the people who heard it concluded that it was none of their business.

Hewetson rose to his feet, dazed and trembling. His knees shook. He held on to the mantelpiece.

“So,” said Hove, “you wanted to kill me because I had ruined you.”

Hewetson said feebly that he had intended the next shot for himself; that death was better than dishonour.

“You’re like several men that I have seen today; you’re too previous. You have the additional disadvantage of being very much the worse for liquor. I am not going to give you any details in your present state, but I am not ruined, and I shall probably come out with a profit on the deal. I have got the help I wanted to pull the thing through. But it strikes me that when I give you the sack and hand you over to the police, you will be very much ruined yourself.”

Hewetson whined monotonously that he had been a fool; he had been a fool, and it was no good for him to say anything. And then, being drunk, he began to weep.

“Stop that,” said Hove sharply; “you make me sick. You have done well for my father, and you’ve done well for me; but at present you’ve broken down—you’re hopeless. I can understand it, but I don’t want to see it. Go home, and tomorrow go down to the sea for a fortnight. Come back at the end of that time. You will quit drinking, of course; you will remember your position here, do your duty, and try not to lose your head in future—you are not likely to go through as bad a crisis as this again. Do what I tell you and you will hear no more about this silly business.”

Hewetson was incapable of answering verbally. He looked grotesque penitence, nodded his head twice in sign of acquiescence, and went out. Hove shrugged his shoulders and rolled a cigarette.

Next morning Hove sold a few bags of Turkey galls, just to give the market the right colour. Sundry speculative young gentlemen sold many more bags. Then the bears waited for Hove to smash, as he was in duty bound to do. And Hove, with Jevon’s firm at his back, kept them waiting.

At the end of a fortnight Hewetson returned—a machine in excellent order and quite respectable. His references to the time when he drank and tried to murder Hove always took the form of “during my illness.”

In the end the very men who had refused to give Hove any assistance had to come crawling to Hove to ask him to let them out as lightly as possible. Hove had one invariable answer: “Unfortunately, I have a partner to think of in this deal.” And then he took all that he thought he could get.

•   •   •

In her boudoir Delia Muir listened gravely to the plain, truthful story that Hove had to tell. Occasionally she interrupted him to ask an intelligent question.

“Well,” she said at last, “I did not tell you to go in for a wild gamble in an article of which, on your own showing, you knew very little. You came within an ace of bankruptcy. But you saved yourself. It is true—you are a good man when the boat upsets in the lock; and for that I trust you. Trust? I almost think I—”

“Oh, you cannot love me!” he cried, taking her hands.

And her eyes answered.

BLUFF

Mr. Charles Madenham Boys, aged fifty-one, is now wearing his hair absurdly short; otherwise he is a man of decidedly attractive appearance. He has a pleasing address, an excellent education, and considerable literary taste. At present he is doing seven years’ penal servitude.

But for the purposes of this story it is idle to inquire for what particular offence he is at present secluded. We have to go much further back in his history, though not to the beginning of it. We may pass over the period of his infancy and youth. We need not dwell on the two years when he was the animating spirit of a Cottage Home at Campton-on-Sea, supported entirely by voluntary contributions, or his successful tour in the provinces with a lecture entitled, “The Lost Tribes,” or his enterprise in establishing the “Bayswater Matrimonial Agency,” and selling the business when it began to get too hot for him. We have to deal with him at the next stage, when at the age of thirty-two he suddenly became Messrs. Parsley, Bashlove and Williams, publishers, of 62, Cordery Street, London, E.C. The firm sprang up suddenly, out of the night, as it were, but its name had an honest, old-established look about it. It began to get to work at once with an advertisement which appeared frequently in local papers and sometimes in more important organs. It ran as follows:—

NEW TALENT.—Required, for immediate publication: essays, poems, sermons, works of travel, short stories, and novels in two or three volumes; preferably from authors who have not yet submitted their work to the appreciation of the public. The publishers’ large staff of expert readers will deal with all work submitted with as little delay as possible. In every case a copy of their opinion may be obtained. Terms: Cash on acceptance. Apply by letter to Messrs’. Parsley, Bashlove & Williams, Publishers, 62, Cordery Street, London, E.C.

Mr. Boys, who was not only the entire firm, but the large staff of expert readers as well, thought highly of this advertisement. The young and unpublished author found his vanity gently tickled by this appeal to “New Talent.” These publishers evidently knew their business and did not want to have anything to do with the men who had written themselves out. The request for poems and sermons must, one would think, have surprised even the youngest and least published of authors. But there it was, clearly printed in the advertisement; theirs not to reason why, but merely to forward their little collections of heart-sobs and take the cash on acceptance. Money down and no waiting—you could not have anything fairer than that. If the work was not accepted, our young author could have the benefit of an expert reader’s opinion, and might in this way learn what was the trivial and easily corrected fault that stood between him and wealth and greatness. It was a beautiful advertisement, and in the good old days (or, if you prefer it, the bad old days) it worked profitably.

The young curate would find that advertisement in the local paper, and look thoughtful and stroke his chin. Then he would take counsel with a sister or a lady dearer than a sister. Buoyed up with hope, he would despatch a long letter to Messrs. Parsley, Bashlove and Williams, and forward with it a bulky parcel of manuscript. The fly was in the web. The spider began operations as follows:—

Dear Sir,—We are in receipt of your letter and the collection of sermons accompanying it, entitled “Sundays after Trinity,” for the offer of which we are greatly obliged. The demand for this class of work largely exceeds the supply, and we hope that we shall be able to make you an offer for the work which you will find satisfactory. On receipt of our registration fee of five shillings—a usual formality, to save us from dealing with dishonest or irresponsible persons—we will forward to you a copy of our preliminary agreement for your signature. When this is returned to us, we will place your manuscript at once in the hands of our readers.

Faithfully yours,

Parsley, Bashlove & Williams.”

That was all right. The curate knew as much about the usual methods of respectable publishers as a Kaffir does about wireless telegraphy. Five shillings not a very large sum; and the curate had an idea that if he did not send it, Messrs. Parsley, Bashlove and Williams would think him dishonest and irresponsible. He sent it; he always sent it. He then obtained, and signed, the preliminary agreement. The point of this, put badly, was that if his manuscript should be lost, burnt, or otherwise destroyed while in the possession of the publishers, he should have no redress of any kind.

After that, everything depended on the opinion which Mr. Boys—to give the firm its shorter name—might have formed of that curate’s financial position. There was never any cash on acceptance, because the readers never did accept outright. If it was thought that the curate had, or could raise money, the readers (who were Mr. Boys) would report to the publishers (who were also Mr. Boys) that the publication would be attended with considerable risk, owing to the daring originality of the work. Under these circumstances, Mr. Boys did not feel himself justified in accepting the book, but would be pleased to publish it on terms which he called facetiously a half-profit system. The details of this system need not be given here. In the hands of Mr. Boys it meant that the author paid Mr. Boys three times the proper price for something which in the end he never got. If the author was unwilling, or unable to pay for these luxuries, he might wish to see the expert reader’s opinion; the advertisement had told him that a copy of it could be obtained. He r now received some additional information as to the terms on which it could be obtained. The terms varied from one to ten guineas; Mr; Boys asked what he thought he could get. He did not despise small sums; “little drops of water, little grains of sand, make the mighty ocean and the beauteous land.” Undoubtedly Mr. Boys had some of the qualities that make for commercial greatness.

But he had not all the qualities. His businesses prospered for a time, but they did not, as a good business should, improve with age. On the contrary, they all showed a tendency to get too hot for him. The Cottage Home, which was also the birthplace of the registration fee of five shillings, had grown very, very much too hot for him. The temperature in those counties which he had obliged with his lecturing tour had mounted, till a return visit would not have been good for his health. He had been driven to drop the Matrimonial Agency, for fear of burning his fingers. The same misfortune befell him later when he introduced to the notice of the invalid public that marvellous remedial agent, “Hampton’s Electro-therapeutic Necklace.” The necklace was a fanciful arrangements of glass beads, copper wire spirals, and tin discs. It could not be manufactured much under twopence, and it sold for a guinea. It did well for a time, but it scorched him before he could get it off.

Messrs. Parsley, Bashlove and Williams did well for a time. The fees came rolling in. Messrs. Parsley, Bashlove and Williams employed two clerks. The office was well and tastefully furnished. Mr. Bashlove (who was Mr. Boys) interviewed “New Talent” in a comfortable room on the first floor, and explained that old Mr. Parsley (who was nobody) took no active part in the business nowadays. If a point arose which Mr. Boys wished to think over, he spoke of the necessity of consulting Mr. Williams (who was the same as Mr. Parsley). It all looked solid, substantial, respectable; and it inspired confidence. Besides, you could not look in Mr. Boys’ honest blue eyes and doubt his word; at least, “New Talent” could not. For a time all went smoothly.

But, one day, Mr. Boys had the misfortune to come to the office in a bad temper; as a rule, his temper was one of the most beautiful things about him. And that morning happened to be selected by the second clerk Barlow for a little unpunctuality. Mr. Boys gave Barlow a week’s wages and dismissed him; and Barlow, before he left the office, was heard to remark that he was not done yet. He went straight to the office of the Lynx, and there he made statements which brought him at last into the august presence of the editor and proprietor, Mr. Desormeaux, and Mr. Desormeaux was much interested in what Barlow had to tell him. For the Lynx made a business of exposure, and its motto was, “No day without its libel action.”

A fortnight later the Lynx had a couple of interesting pages on the subject of Messrs. Parsley, Bashlove and Williams, who, it will be remembered, were Mr. Boys. And the business of Mr. Boys fell off in consequence. Messrs. Parsley, Bashlove and Williams replied in the public prints that the attack in the Lynx was based on information supplied by a discharged servant. They challenged the Lynx to contradict this statement, and promised that if this were done they would treat the Lynx to a libel action. If the Lynx would not do this, it had merely produced an additional reason why it should be treated with contempt, and Messrs. Parsley, Bashlove and Williams were not inclined to waste powder and shot upon it or to give it a gratuitous advertisement. On the whole, a clever and dignified answer; the Lynx had not made a single statement about Messrs. Parsley, Bashlove and Williams which it was not prepared to prove; it had said nothing which was not absolutely true; but its information had been derived from a discharged servant, and the public distrusts discharged servants. But before its next issue the Lynx had got into communication with maddened curates and disappointed poets who had had dealings with the firm. Their statements were printed at length with grim and sarcastic comments. Mr. Desormeaux trailed his coat up and down the columns of his paper, and requested Messrs. Parsley, Bashlove and Williams to tread on the tail of it. He said that the man who skulked under this alias had never done any legitimate publishing business at all, and had never paid a single author one single penny. If he was wrong, Mr. Boys had his remedy, and he invited Mr. Boys to take it.

Mr. Boys did not propose to take that remedy. There were Cottage Homes and other things in his past which had taken away his taste for being cross-examined; even in his present business, though he had tried to keep just within the letter of the law, he was by no means sure that he had been successful. It seemed to him probable that if he entered the witness-box he would have to enter the dock shortly afterwards. He decided to treat Mr. Desormeaux with silent contempt, but that was not very satisfying. If a man kicks you steadily down three pairs of stairs—which was practically what Mr. Desormeaux had done to Mr. Boys—it is rather an insufficient revenge to treat that man with coldness the next time you meet him. Mr. Boys was much pained; these attacks were so unjust. It was, for instance, absolutely untrue to say that he had never paid an author a penny. Once he had paid an author ten pounds; for that sum he had purchased the copyright of Miss Lucia Dane’s novel, “Beyond.” It had only happened once, and it was not worth while to mention it; ten pounds is not a quixotically generous price to pay for the copyright of a long novel; Mr. Desormeaux would say that, but would put it more strongly. But the fact remained that Mr. Boys had once paid money for a work, and therefore he now felt like a Christian martyr, wrongly accused and shamefully ill-treated.

His solitary purchase of a book from an author had taken place a year before. One day, greatly to his surprise, he received a manuscript that was undoubtedly worth publishing. There was little literary skill or imagination about it; some fool of a girl had just blurted out her own love-story—emptied out her heart and life for the benefit of the public. The thing was a human document, absolutely true and convincing, and consequently of enthralling interest. Mr. Boys had judgement and could detect the quality of a book. Nothing in this vale of tears is absolutely certain, but it was extremely likely that a book of this type would bring in a fair profit. In that case the half-profit system was, from Mr. Boys’ point of view, contra-indicated; it was only good in those cases where there was no possibility of a profit. Without actually making up his mind what he would do, Mr. Boys wrote a letter to Miss Lucia Dane, suggesting that if she were ever in London she should call at the office with reference to her book; it would be more easy to arrange matters at an interview than by letter. The fact is that Mr. Boys had been a good deal interested in the book himself, and was rather curious to see the author. He signed the letter Edmund Bashlove. The girl came. She was, as he had expected, a very young girl, probably not more than seventeen. She was beautiful, in a Blessed Damozel manner, and had the saddest eyes that Mr. Boys had ever seen. She said that she did not want any money, and from her appearance Mr. Boys was inclined to believe her. He might have had the book for nothing, but he paid ten pounds for it. To have taken it for nothing would have put Mr. Boys in the inferior position, and be wanted the girl to think well of him. As I said just now, she was beautiful, and Mr. Boys found her interesting; besides, it is for some perverse reason always easier to give to those who do not want.

At the time Mr. Boys had quite intended to publish the book. But the months had slipped by and nothing had been done; the other side of his business took all his time; the publication of “Beyond” was reserved as a luxury. Miss Lucia Dane wrote once or twice about it; but she had not written during the last few months, and the book had passed out of his memory, until this scandalous attack in the Lynx had recalled it.

As Mr. Boys read over and over again the attacks upon him in the Lynx, he became not only pained by their injustice, but also frightened at their possible rights. It was not only his business that was in danger; his personal liberty was threatened. For the moment he thought it better to lie low, and to do nothing which would be likely to attract further attention from the Lynx, The advertisement which extended an invitation from Messrs. Parsley, Bashlove and Williams to “New Talent” was withdrawn; when the editor of the Lynx had found somebody else to harry, and had forgotten Mr. Boys, the business might be pushed again under another name. At the same time, it was just as well to prevent further evidence coming in the way of Mr. Desormeaux. For the first time in his business career Mr. Boys answered the letters of the malcontents, people who had tasted the bitters of his special brand of half-profit system and were inclined to be pugnacious. He answered them politely, and explained that it was only from a blunder on the part of a clerk, who had since been discharged, that their complaints had not been brought to the notice of the firm before. And he not only answered the letters; in many cases be refunded a part of the money which he had received. The Lynx gave him a contemptuous paragraph in its next number, and then left him alone; it was useless to kick a dead man, and Mr. Boys was careful to give no sign of life. Besides, there were plenty of the living who required the attentions of Mr. Desormeaux; and his readers liked variety.

The Lynx had a good circulation, though of course there were many people who never saw it; and many who did see it, but did not attach very much importance to its sensational disclosures. It hit Mr. Boys very hard. “New Talent” became very shy and rare. The mention of a moderate registration fee of five shillings seemed to frighten it away at once. Sometimes, when everything seemed to be going most promisingly, “New Talent” would suddenly break off all negotiations, and have the impertinence to say that certain back numbers of the Lynx had been brought to its notice. Then Mr. Boys would send a letter after this manner:—

“We had imagined that the circumstances which provoked the absurd attack upon us in the Lynx were a matter of general knowledge, as they are a complete vindication of our character and position. But as the ravings of a dismissed clerk, published in a professedly scurrilous journal, seem to have some weight with you, we are more than ready to return your manuscript as you suggest.”

This was all very well as far as it went, but it did not mean money. Things went from bad to worse. There was not enough work to keep one clerk busy, and Mr. Boys still kept two for the sake of appearances; office rents in Cordery Street are very high; Mr. Boys had also a house in Wimbledon, which was more in keeping with his love of style than with his income. On all sides money was flowing out, and the only money that was flowing in consisted of an occasional five shilling registration fee from an ambitious schoolgirl, or a rarer guinea for the expert reader’s opinion from a disappointed governess. It irked him that he had repaid those sums to the recalcitrant; he ought to have seen before that the game was up, and not to have wasted money on trying to save it. However, he realised that the game was up now; he decided that it was not even worth while to try it on again under a different name. There were better fish in the sea, and he had just had that beautiful and profitable idea which was to materialise as “Hampton’s Electro-therapeutic Necklace.”

His aim was now to come out of the business with as much in hand as possible; you cannot get your Electro-therapeutic Necklace on the public without spending a good deal in pushing and advertising. And here I am afraid Mr. Boys showed a want of originality; his furniture and stock were insured, and he decided to have a fire. The fire broke out in the room at the back where the manuscripts were kept; but it was detected before it had done any very considerable damage. Mr. Boys, who had engineered that fire, was not detected, but he became an object of suspicion. the insurance company never disputed a claim if they could possibly help it, but they offered Mr. Boys one quarter of the sum that he demanded; and the tone of their letter was unpleasantly minatory; without actually saying so, they implied that if he did not like that, they would refuse to pay anything, and leave him to take what action he pleased. He replied with the vox anjelica stop out; he was, he said, too poor to fight a wealthy insurance company, and was compelled to accept their offer. It was not the loss which this caused him that pained him chiefly, though that was considerable; it was the thought that they probably suspected that he had tried to cheat them. He did not blame them in the least; he could see himself that there were circumstances connected with the fire that to a hard man of the world might seem suspicious. He could only tell them that he was guiltless; he added, with pathos, that it was not the first time in his life that he had been wronged. The company read his letter, paid up, and were extremely sorry that they had ever made him any offer at all.

The damage done by the fire was confined almost exclusively to a pile of authors’ manuscripts; and as the authors had signed that preliminary agreement, they had no claim against him, and Mr. Boys took what there was. But he was a disappointed man; he had hoped for a longer and better fire altogether, and on the part of the insurance company for more of that spirit of genial confidence which makes business so pleasant.

A few days later, Mr. Boys, still bent on getting as much in hand as possible, and true to his policy of not despising small sums, bethought him of Miss Lucia Dane’s novel, “Beyond.” He did not now propose to publish that book, or any other book, himself, but he might be able to sell the copyright through an agent to another publisher at a reasonable profit. Mr. Boys told a clerk to bring him the manuscript. The clerk was away for some little time, and when he returned he brought with him a little stack of sheets of paper neatly fastened together with a pale blue riband. “It’s only the third part, sir,” he said apologetically. “The rest was destroyed in the fire.”

Mr. Boys swore gently under his breath and told the clerk to go. There was a chance that Miss Dane might have made another copy for herself, but Mr. Boys did not think it likely. In that case—

At this point in his meditations the clerk knocked and entered again. Miss Dane had just called, and was in the waiting-room, and wished to see Mr. Bashlove. She said that her business was of importance. “Show her in,” said Mr. Boys, and slipped the third part of “Beyond” into the drawer of his writing-table.

Miss Dane had changed a good deal in appearance. She was still beautiful, but she was no longer pathetic. She looked radiantly happy, and rather proud, and also very much ashamed of herself.

“About a year and a half ago,” she said, “I sold to you a novel of mine. Do you remember it?”

“Perfectly,” said Mr. Boys.

“I thought that perhaps, as you have not published it yet, you might have gone over it again and found that, after all, it was not good enough. And if you will let me have it back again, I will gladly return you the ten pounds. In fact, I have brought them with me on purpose.”

Mr. Boys rose from his chair and paced the room. “May I ask,” he said, “why you have changed your mind, and to which publisher you propose to transfer it?”

“I don’t want it to be published at all. I want to destroy it.”

That was all right. Then Miss Dane had not seen those unjust attacks by Mr. Desormeaux in the Lynx.

“But why?” he asked.

“The fact of the case is—oh, it’s awfully difficult to explain how one has been silly! Well, most of the book is real. That girl in it, you know—”

“You mean the heroine?”

“Yes, the idiot who thinks she is in love with that nincompoop who sings—the hero, I suppose he would be called. She is going to be married to another man now, very happily; and it would hurt her feelings, terribly, to be reminded of all that old rubbish now; and very likely people would guess that it was meant for her, and everyone would know, and it would be horrid. I never ought to have written the stupid book at all. I am sure anyone who published it would lose a great deal of money by it. I want you to take my ten pounds, and burn the agreement and the book.”

Mr. Boys took a few moments to reflect before he answered. He had guessed the facts now—that Miss Dane had been the heroine of her own book, and, as she was about to marry somebody who had not been the hero, did not want the old love affair publicly embalmed and exhibited. It was very natural; it was also, Mr. Boys thought, very promising.

“I cannot burn your book,” he said. This was true, as he had burned two-thirds of it already; the rest of his remarks were, on the whole, less true. “I cannot burn it, because it will be published next month. Two-thirds of it are in type already, and as you came in I was on the point of sending off the third part to the printer.” He took the third part out of the drawer and rang the bell. “My clerk may as well be sending it off while we are talking.”

“Oh, don’t! Oh, don’t!” Miss Dane cried excitedly. “It must be stopped. I’ll do anything to stop it.”

The clerk entered. Mr. Boys cast his eye on the third part of “Beyond.” Miss Dane suffered agonies. Then Mr. Boys shrugged his shoulders and gave his clerk a couple of letters to post.

“But this won’t do at all,” said Mr. Boys, when the clerk had gone. “You have no rights in that book whatever. It is my property, to do with just as I please. I do not want to do anything that might be unpleasant to you, but I do not see how I am to stay publication. The taste for books of the class has grown enormously of late, and the book is worth ten times as much now as it was when I bought it from you. Then the contracts with printers and binders are already made, and it will cost an enormous sum to break them. Then there are the advertising contracts, and—er—there are others. You could not find this sum yourself, I presume. If you went to your father—”

“You know I can’t do that. I’ve not told anybody about the book yet, and I don’t want to tell anybody. I could get thirty or forty pounds in a week by selling some things.”

“That, of course, would be quite insufficient. If I can avoid actual loss, I would forego my profits; but I have partners, and my out-of-pocket expenses in connection with the book must be met, or else the book must be published.”

It was arranged that Miss Dane should call again next week. But when next week came, it was not Miss Dane who called, but Sir James Hyles, Baronet. He brought a letter with him to Mr. Bashlove.

“I see, Sir James,” said Mr. Boys, “that Miss Dane empowers you to act for her in this matter. You are, perhaps—”

“Yes,” said Sir James bluntly, “I am going to marry Miss Dane. Now, look here. You’ve got her book, and she wants you not to publish it. Sign this paper, and you can’t publish it or do anything else with it except destroy it—so my solicitor says.”

Mr. Boys looked over the paper and nodded. “That is so.”

“Well?” said Sir James.

“My out-of-pocket expenses in connection with the book are three hundred and forty-two pounds. Are you prepared to pay that?”

“Certainly, or twice that, if necessary; but as my solicitors know a little about you, Mr. Boys, the examination into your accounts will be strict. You will have to show that you have really expended that sum. I have here a banknote for fifty pounds. If you will accept that, and sign the document before you, there will be no questions.”

After all, fifty pounds is a very fair price to get for not publishing a novel which you could not publish in any case. And Sir James had evidently mastered Mr. Bashlove’s alias, and his solicitors might have other knowledge of an inconvenient nature.

So Mr. Boys smiled pleasantly, signed the paper, and put the banknote in his pocket. “I accept the fifty,” he said, “and Miss Dane may consider that I have made her a present of the difference; and if you will give me the name of your solicitors, I will take such steps as I may be advised with regard to their slanderous statements about myself.”

“Same people you had against you when you were running the Cottage Home. G’-mornin’.” And Sir James passed out of the office.

FIFTEEN PER CENT

The offices of Mr. James Pellet, solicitor, in the City, were rather useful than ornamental. Fifteen minutes in their waiting-room were calculated to damp any client who had arrived with an enthusiastic idea of giving his solicitor instructions. The mural decorations consisted of deed-boxes, whose very inscriptions bore witness to the brevity of human life and the frequency of human bankruptcy. The table was plain, the chairs were severe, and the rigid linoleum was discouraging.

There one fine morning sat a young man of twenty-three, by name Ernest Langley Tewson. He looked careful and thoughtful, but he did not look clever, though he was ready with a scheme for making fifteen per cent. with perfect safety. So far, E. L. Tewson had not, as the French say, invented gunpowder. He was an orphan, whose father had left him some two hundred a year. He was at present employed in the office of his uncles, Tewson Brothers, and there made an additional hundred. He supposed that one day he would be made a partner, in spite of the brusque—one might almost have said offensive—manner of Uncle Braxton, and the absence of any great encouragement from the more genial Uncle Langley. Uncle Langley admitted that the young man was not brilliant, but said that steadiness was what was most wanted in business. Certainly there was not in the City of London anything steadier than Ernest. He had not a vice or an extravagance, and as long as he was doing routine work did not do so badly. He was at present spending about a quarter of his income, and regretted very much that he ever had to spend anything at all. He was steady even to the point of being slightly unpopular with the men of his own age he came across. It was when he was required to use his own initiative, to do something that he had never done before, that Ernest invariably broke down. Uncle Braxton had at various times called his nephew a sheep’s head, a boiled owl, and some other things that are much too shocking to repeat; he regarded the hundred which rewarded his nephew’s services as an amiable waste of money. If anyone had suggested to him the propriety of one day making Ernest a partner, he would have had apoplexy. If there was one person in the world that Mr. Braxton Tewson heartily disliked, it was his young nephew, and, but for Uncle Langley, Ernest would have had to seek for employment elsewhere long before. He, on his part, was just as strong in his dislike of Uncle Braxton. He kept a list of all the offensive expressions that Uncle Braxton had used to him, with the date of each and a thoughtful note of the circumstances. He did not quite know why he did this, but it was certainly in its way a great comfort. He pictured a financial crisis in the firm. The business of Tewson Brothers was not speculative, and they were about as likely to have a financial crisis as the Bank of England, which, by the way, had before this been driven to pay its customers in sixpences. Then Ernest would step forward with his accumulated savings, rescue the firm, and be made a partner. He would then turn to his uncle and say with dignity, “Uncle Braxton, you must understand for the future that our relative positions have changed. I shall tolerate no disrespect from you.” He rehearsed this little scene frequently in his own mind. Uncle Braxton would have laughed till he was ill if he had ever heard of it.

But Ernest, like most thoughtful young men, was secretive. Not even Uncle Langley knew what his savings were or how they were invested. The young man had a kind of pig-headed independence, and loved to veil himself in mystery. He had chosen his own solicitor to do such legal work as was unavoidable in connection with those investments. So far he had believed in first class investments and third class economies. He abhorred gambling and speculation of all kinds. There is a good deal to be said for that method, but it is not rapid. Now, Ernest wanted rapidity and perfect safety together, fifteen per cent. and gilt-edged stuff. There are many men who want the same thing, and it is generally believed that they very seldom get it. Ernest had recognised the improbability of it, and had, so far, resigned himself to four per cent. and safety. But now, now at last, he had had a bright idea, and it was this idea which had brought him to Mr. Pollet’s office.

He had got tired of the waiting-room copy of a financial paper, and was looking out of the window at the busy traffic below when a clerk entered.

“Mr. Pollet will see you now, sir.” And forthwith Ernest was ushered into the presence.

Mr. James Pollet did not look at all like the traditional solicitor of the stage. He had neither grey hair nor an archidiaconal manner. He was rather a fat man of about forty, with hair that was definitely sandy, parted in the middle, and kept in a state of immaculate shine and smoothness. His shirt was always a size or two too big, and seemed to have broken its front in sheer despair of ever fitting him. His waistcoat was expansive and cut unusually low. He had chubby hands, and on one finger wore a plain gold ring, which could never have been pawned unless the finger had been pawned with it, or Mr. Pollet had gone in for the Banting system. His manner was almost nervous and very quiet. His friends would have smiled slightly if they had been told that Mr. Pollet was nervous.

He greeted Ernest cordially. He was pleased to see him; the rain was still holding off; there had not been much in the papers lately; and what was the business? Ernest looked a little doubtful. His passion for secrecy was strong in him.

“Well, Mr. Pollet,” he said, “I know that I can speak to you in confidence.”

Mr. Pollet seemed rather hurt. “Is that necessary, Mr. Tewson?” he asked in a high-pitched voice of querulous resignation. “Surely, if you have the slightest doubt, you would do better to—”

“Not at all, not at all,” broke in Ernest hurriedly. “But—well, the fact is that an idea has occurred to me that I have never come across before; and it seems to me to be one of very considerable commercial value. It would be spoilt if it became generally known. I get into the habit of being very much on my guard, and the habit persists even when there is no occasion for it.”

“I see,” said Mr. Pollet.

“Well, now,” Ernest continued, “I should like to go through my scheme with you. It has to do with my—er—insignificant investments. Perhaps you would check me if there is a flaw in it anywhere.”

“Certainly,” said Mr. Pollet.

“As you know, I have at present eight hundred pounds out at four per cent. on Pagmore’s place at Orstanton. I have also about two hundred pounds at my banker’s, which I must put into something or other. Now, I think you know my views on investment.”

“They are very natural and not uncommon,” said Mr. Pollet, “but it is very difficult to meet them. You want four per cent. securities, and ten or twelve per cent. interest. I must tell you again that it can’t be done.”

“Are you quite sure it can’t be done?” asked Ernest, with a smile of dark but triumphant cunning.

“If it can, I should be very glad to hear the way. I confess that I don’t know it.”

“My idea is merely a combination of two very simple things. I have figured it out, and I should say that house property that had been bought with discretion, and was well looked after, ought to bring in about eight per cent.”

“Possibly,” said Mr. Pollet guardedly. “Much depends on what is meant by ‘discretion’.”

“Very well. Now we come to the second thing. All I can get when I lend money on mortgages is four per cent.”

“That is so; you insist on first class mortgages.”

“Precisely. Don’t think I am blaming you at all. I know you are not responsible for the market conditions, and that you do the very best that can be done with them. Let us pass to my combination of the two things that I have just mentioned. Suppose for three thousand pounds, could I borrow two-thirds of that sum on it?”

“Very easily,” said Mr. Pollet. “I have always clients who would lend you the money, and be thankful for the investment.”

“Then you see my notion?”

Mr. Pollet looked the image of perplexity, and said that he had not quite tumbled to it yet.

“Yet it is as simple as possible; in fact, I can’t make out why other people have not thought of it before. If I buy that three thousand pound property, I make eight per cent. on my invested thousand. But I also make eight per cent. on the two thousand that I am able to borrow, less the four per cent. that I pay for the use of them. That is equivalent to saying that I make sixteen per cent. on my invested thousand, and I have about as good security as it is possible to get.”

“That is so,” said Mr. Pollet. “Less, of course, the necessary legal expenses.”

“I had not forgotten them. There are charges for stamps and engrossing and so on. I cannot estimate it exactly, but I dare say it mounts up; but of course those costs would be distributed over the period for which the investment lasted. However, there is no need to press it; suppose I call it fifteen per cent., which would quite satisfy me, considering the high class of security that I should be holding, it still seems to me to be good business. Fifteen per cent. is a very nice thing.”

Mr. Pollet agreed cordially.

“Now,” said Ernest, with the air of a man in an impregnable position, “just tell me where I am wrong.”

“It is a most ingenious idea,” Mr. Pollet owned. “You must not expect me, of course, to say anything which could be construed as a guarantee. On the figures as you give them you are all right. But we solicitors learn to take nothing for granted. Suppose, for instance, that some sudden subsidence of the soil swallowed up your property. That is a remote chance, but it is a chance. Suppose that your tenant bolted and left no address. You would probably take precautions not to get that kind of tenant, but one cannot leave that kind of thing out of one’s calculations. All I can say is, that on paper your idea seems feasible. I think that I should prefer to give you a written opinion, embodying what I have just said.”

“That will do for me,” said Ernest. “I am no gambler, but there are some chances that one simply must take if any business is to be done at all. We can’t stop for a billion to nothing chance of some tremendous upheaval of Nature. That is a risk which one has to take every day, business or no business. I should like you to call in that money of mine, please, and for the next few weeks I will be looking about me to find something that will suit me. You shall hear from me as soon as I am successful. I am not going to take the first thing that offers. Until I can see my way to my money I shall do nothing.”

On the following morning Ernest got a letter from Mr. Pollet, “referring to our interview of yesterday.” It was not a very encouraging letter, and there were parts of it that Ernest hardly understood; they were apparently referring to something that Mr. Pollet had said at the interview, and Ernest could not remember anything that Mr. Pollet had said which would quite fit in. However, no specific objection was raised to the scheme.

Ernest began to be very busy. He studied the lists of house agents. He attended auctions and inspected properties when he had the time, and that was not always. The ideas of Tewson Brothers as to office hours were strict. On one occasion there was a very tempting little thing in Surbiton that Ernest thought he ought to have a look at. He tried for Uncle Langley, but Mr. Langley Tewson was away for a day or two. There was no help for it; he approached the room devoted to Uncle Braxton, knocked, and was bidden to enter.

“What do you want?” asked Mr. Braxton Tewson, without looking up from the letter he was writing.

“I’m very sorry to interrupt you, uncle,” he began. He paused a moment for his uncle to say it did not matter; but Uncle Braxton said nothing, went on with his letter, and seemed hardly to be aware that his nephew was in the room. Ernest had no choice but to continue. “I wanted particularly to get down to Surbiton this afternoon, on some business with regard to one of my investments. Could I have a couple of hours? I don’t often ask for anything of the kind.”

Uncle Braxton wrote three more lines of his letter, picked it up and read what he had written. Ernest stood and waited, with the propitiatory smile on his face frozen and fixed. At last his uncle spoke, apparently to the inkpot.

“We are very busy just now, and it is inconvenient to spare even a duffer like you. But take your two hours if you like.”

It was not very graceful, but Ernest thanked him warmly.

“And,” Mr. Braxton Tewson added grimly, “if you go, you need not trouble to come back to the office again at all.”

And Ernest sighed and went away and wrote it all down in the book where he kept the list of things that he had against Uncle Braxton. Very methodical and careful young men are not infrequently rather childish as well.

A man’s first drive at golf is proverbial, and it is bad to play poker with a beginner. When Ernest finally bought his property he had the beginner’s luck, he got a fairly good bargain. Ernest would have ascribed this to his judgement, of which he had a high opinion. The price, exactly three thousand, just suited him. There was no difficulty about the mortgage. Mr. Pollet had a client, a widow, who was quite willing to lend the money. Ernest saw roseate visions. His thousand would bring him in one hundred and sixty in the first year. Not a penny of that would be spent. It would be added to his savings and invested on the new principle discovered by Ernest Langley Tewson, by which fifteen per cent. may be made with perfect safety. In ten years he would be a pretty warm man. If in that time his uncles had been so blind to their own interest that they had not taken him into partnership, he would be in a position to talk to them. He swelled with pride. He wanted to talk to somebody about himself. He invented little conversations in which Uncle Braxton first became acquainted with the scheme and realised its merits. He imagined Uncle Braxton in the act of confessing that he had been wrong, and that the office had entertained a financial genius unawares. Under those circumstances he decided that the right attitude for Ernest Langley Tewson to take would be one of dignified goodwill. He would smile and observe that bygones might be bygones.

These were pretty and consolatory thoughts, and they lasted fairly well for a time. They fell to pieces when he opened the foolscap envelope which contained Mr. James Pollet’s bill of costs, and felt poignantly, as others have done before him, the hideous injustice by which a solicitor, acting for mortgagor and mortgagee, charges everything to the man who borrows the money, and is therefore presumably the less able to pay. In some ways it was a good bill; it was comprehensive; you felt at once that nothing had been left out from carelessness. It was all there—every letter, every stamp, every minute of time. Around the main item many little items clustered; like children round their mother. There was Mr. Pellet’s authorised commission for finding the money. There was the surveyor’s fee; he was Mr. Pellet’s usual surveyor, and his charges were high. There were certain sums paid to counsel. It was all there, and the total amounted to just about seven times as much as Ernest had supposed possible. He checked the figures and found them quite correct; Mr. Pollet’s clerks did not make mistakes. He examined the different items. Some of them he could understand, and some he could not, but he did not see his way to dispute with any success those of them that he did understand. In this frame of mind, with anguish knitting his brow and with nothing in his mind beyond a vague idea of getting something taken off the bill, he hurried off to Mr. Pollet. Mr. Pollet gave him precisely three minutes. At the end of that time Ernest left the office with that bill in statu quo ante, and with a misty conviction that if there ever was a cad in the world who tried to swindle his benefactor, that cad was Ernest Langley Tewson, and that benefactor was Mr. James Pollet. Ernest’s economies for the next few months were exceptionally severe. That fifteen per cent. with safety was fading away, and the loss had to be made up somehow. The serious injury to his fifteen per cent. haunted his mind when he should have been thinking of other things, and gave Uncle Braxton occasion for providing more material for Ernest’s little book.

A brief interval followed, and then another blow fell. Mr. Ernest received a short and businesslike letter giving him the usual notice that the widow intended to call her money in. There was no help for it. Ernest had to rush off to pay another visit to Mr. Pollet, a visit that would be poisoned by the knowledge that it would assuredly go down in the bill. Mr. Pollet soothed him as he might have soothed a frightened child.

“Really, Mr. Tewson, there is no occasion for you to upset yourself at all. This is all perfectly regular—quite in order. If Mrs. Feloes is altering her investments, we must find somebody else who will lend the money. The property is all right, and I think I may guarantee that you will not have the slightest trouble about it.”

“Yes, I know,” said Ernest irritably. “You can find someone to lend the money, but I shall have another bill to pay.”

“Do you suggest that I should do all this work for you, pay the out-of-pocket expenses, and make no charge?”

“No, not that precisely.”

“Then, Mr. Tewson,” said Mr. Pollet with some severity, “I am afraid I don’t quite follow you. But observations of this kind are not very pleasant or very reasonable. I think we had something of the kind from you before. Under the circumstances I—” Mr. Pollet rose from his chair.

Ernest was immediately and profusely apologetic, and Mr. Pollet did not, after all, refuse to act for him. As Ernest walked along the street from the office he murmured bitterly, “Fifteen per cent.” That dream had had its awakening now. Later in the morning Uncle Braxton inquired if his nephew could brush his own hair or blow his own nose without help. It was merely a matter of curiosity, because he did not seem able to do anything else. Uncle Braxton’s sarcasm was a trifle heavy, perhaps.

On the other hand, Uncle Langley invited him for a Saturday to Monday. Ernest had long ago worked out the Saturday to Monday problem, and had found that by avoiding the degrading practice of giving tips to servants, and by travelling first class with a third class ticket, it could be made to pay.

It was during that visit, as he sat in the smoking-room with his uncle, that Uncle Langley said, a propos of something that he had just read in the paper, that he could not for the life of him make out why any solicitor was fool enough to play about with trust funds.

“A solicitor has so many ways of making money that are perfectly legal. The swells of the profession may turn up their noses at them, but you ask Jimmy Pollet. He doesn’t know what a slack time is. He doesn’t let his clerks sit idle for want of business. He always keeps something going, does Jimmy.”

Ernest pricked up his ears. “Who is this Mr. Pollet?” he asked in the off-hand way of one who hears the name for the first time.

“Jimmy’s a solicitor in the City, and a pretty smart man, too, though he doesn’t look it. About two years ago a man offered to take three pounds to one that Jimmy would be struck off in twelve months. I laid it and won the bet. When you want to find Jimmy, you look on the right side of the hedge. He’ll be there, and he may be pretty near the border.”

Ernest reflected. “I don’t quite understand, uncle, what you meant by this Pollet never having a slack time and always keeping something going. His business must be subject to the same fluctuations as others.”

“Well, like most other solicitors, he has got a certain number of clients who practically leave their money in his hands for him to invest at his discretion. When he finds things are slack he has nothing to do but to move that money round a little. Every time that money moves some sticks to Jimmy’s hands, as by law appointed. Suppose he puts old Mrs. Blank’s money out of rails into industrials, or vice versa—and he can always find a good reason for some such change—he gets half commission from the broker. And in all probability Mrs. Blank is very pleased at this evidence that he is keeping a watchful eye on her investments. When you come to do that, all along the line, that mounts up. I should say that Jimmy is far from being a poor man now, and yet when he started I remember that he had to borrow money from your Uncle Braxton to do it with. By the way, you look pretty gloomy.”

“Yes, uncle—I mean, no. I was only thinking about something. Now, how would that man act with regard to mortgages?”

“Mortgages? Why, they are about the fattest thing of the lot. Jimmy makes a very good bill of costs, to start with; of course, he takes the rough with the smooth there; all don’t pay alike, but I fancy the average is good. After that the fun begins. When Jimmy’s got nothing better to do he shuffles the mortgages. A. takes B.’s, and B. takes C.’s, and so on. And of course, each change is more money for Jimmy. I don’t know whether you understand.”

“Yes,” said Ernest mournfully, “I understand all right. And you said, uncle, that this was all perfectly legal.”

“I believe so.”

Ernest was quiet and meditative for the rest of his visit. His fifteen per cent. scheme was in ashes, but from those ashes another scheme was arising. He did not generally do things in any hurry, but by the end of the week he had decided on a momentous step, and sought and obtained audience of his two uncles.

“I wanted to ask,” he said, “what my prospects are in working here.”

“None,” said Uncle Braxton at once.

“Of course,” said Uncle Langley, “if you showed more ability and could do more responsible work, your salary would be advanced.”

“Can’t show what he’s not got,” murmured Uncle Braxton.

“Then I may take it,” said Ernest, “that I have no chance of a partnership ultimately.” He was not contradicted, and continued, “Well, I don’t seem to be getting on very well here. It’s possible this sort of business is not altogether in my line. I have been thinking lately that I should like to try something else. I suppose you would find no difficulty in getting another man who could do my work.”

“Could get fifty of them in ten minutes by putting my head out of window and whistling,” said Uncle Braxton.

And so it was arranged that Ernest should leave. “I suppose,” said Uncle Langley, “you have other plans already made. But you are young, and I think you should take advice before deciding anything.”

“Well,” said Ernest, “it will mean a lot of money, and work, and waiting. But the fact is, that I have been thinking that I should like to be a solicitor.”

SOAMES v. FARSHAW

“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.”

[I am afraid of the Danaans and those bearing gifts]

How Mr. S. Bywater Soames was a young man who wanted money without working for it, by the simple process of knowing something, may possibly be remembered. It may also be remembered how he triumphed over the Anglo-Foreign Hotels Syndicate, and milked them of the sum of six thousand pounds, in the matter of Soames’s lease of his chambers in Doddington Street.

About a year after that event Soames was lunching by himself at the Continental, when a tall old gentleman, of somewhat military appearance, touched him on the shoulder.

“Mr. Soames, I think. I wonder if you remember me.”

“Certainly. Mr. Farshaw, of the Anglo-Foreign Hotels Syndicate. Won’t you sit down?”

“Thanks. It will be far pleasanter than lunching alone. We were opponents once, but I’m glad to see that you bear no malice. After all, why should you? You got six thousand for what was not worth six hundred in the open market.”

“But I was not dealing in the open market. So far as I remember, the offer you made to me was twenty-five pounds.”

“True. Twenty-five and a few little extras. You looked so young. You still do; happy man! Of course, in business one has to try to buy as cheaply as possible. Indeed, as a director, acting on behalf of others, it was my duty to do so. I think we may call it quits there. I’m afraid Chive was rude to you, but I was not responsible for that drunken brute; we threw him out soon afterwards. Still, I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right,” said Soames languidly. “Syndicate doing pretty well?”

“Not more than fairly well, I’m afraid. But I have nothing to do with it now. It was splendid business once, but there’s a lot of competition nowadays; any new idea’s copied at once. When you’ve had the cream you come down to the milk. I thought it best to leave before we were right on to it. I sold out. I thought I saw better ways of using my little savings. Then, again, in business you must not be too particular what company you keep; but Chive was a bit too strong for my taste, and the man who followed him was not much better. Then there was old Mandelbaum—remember him?”

“I shall never forget him.”

“Oh, he was typical; he was chronic; he was too hot! I’d had as much as I could stand. And what has been your latest coup Mr. Soames, if one may ask?”

“I’ve done nothing. I’ve been resting. I require a good deal of rest; I’m easily tired. For the last few months I’ve been abroad. I came back to attend a sale of Stuart relics. But I think, perhaps, I ought to be making some more money now. Perhaps you have some opportunities to offer me?” he said, with a smile.

“Well,” said Mr. Farshaw, “after I’d left the Syndicate I had a few deals in house property. I made some successes, and I made some disappointments. There wasn’t much in it, anyway. Then I went into the jungle—West Africans, you know. That’s been much better, and we’re not at the end of it yet. There are opportunities for a man with a little capital, if you like.”

“Ah!” said Soames, “I don’t know anything about mines and that sort of thing.”

“Let me tell you, then. Let me just give you a few instances.”

Mr. Farshaw began on his instances. He reeled off big figures with conviction, and pronounced many names with ease and familiarity that would have baffled Soames completely. He exhibited the pitfalls of the market and gave the simplest possible rules for avoiding them. He became descriptive. After hearing him one might have thought it idle and slovenly to take more than three weeks over making a large fortune. His candid blue eyes gleamed as he attempted to paint some—only some—of the miraculous possibilities that were awaiting the investor. And he was not ungenerous, for in some of the things that held out the brightest hopes Mr. Farshaw was quite prepared to sell his own personal holding—to give Soames a start.

When he had quite finished, Soames, who had appeared interested, said, with a sigh, that he did not go in for that kind of thing. He might, perhaps, see if there were anything that would suit him in the way of house property.

Mr. Farshaw did not look perfectly satisfied, but he remained as obliging as ever. “Well,” he said, “since you ask me for opportunities, I can tell you of something in that direction, too. It doesn’t represent the big thing that can be done by judicious investment in West Africans. It’s simply a good and certain profit for a man who can afford to put a little capital by for a few years. It’s on a very small scale, but, so far as it goes, it’s very particularly all right. I found it myself and fully intended to tackle it myself. But at that time I was already nibbling at the West African business, and I’m not a rich man, and cannot afford to lock up any capital. It’s simply a question of buying a narrow, triangular strip of road frontage to sell to the owner of a larger property behind it.”

“Why can’t the present owner of the larger property buy the strip for himself?”

“He can, but he won’t. He doesn’t care about making money. He’s a scholar and a collector, and so on. He’s also a recluse, and it wouldn’t be far wrong to say that he’s a little cracked, as well. But he’s an old man and a bit of an invalid. He can’t last long. And the next owner, whoever he may be, will want that long strip of road frontage. You can buy it now for £750, and you will be able to sell it then for £1,500. It stands to reason. Why—”

“Pardon me,” said Soames. “You don’t own any of this property, or any in the neighbourhood?”

“Not one solitary inch.”

“Why do you give me this chance? Why do you show such remarkable generosity to me, of all people?”

Mr. Farshaw watched Soames keenly and for one moment seemed to be reflecting on his answer. He was always more ready for a subtle than a simple question. “At present,” he said, “I have given you nothing. You would not know where to go to find this property. You have no names or addresses. I could not afford to give, and I am sure you would not care to take a present from me so valuable as this information is. I will sell you it on fair business terms.”

“I see. What are they?”

“We adjourn, say, to the smoking-room. I give you all the necessary details and answer your questions as far as I can. You go down to the place and look into it for yourself. If you buy the strip, you call on me on the day of the purchase and hand me three twenty-fives—that is, ten per cent. on the price you pay—as my commission. If you decide it is not good enough, you pay me nothing, but you agree to keep the information to yourself, so that I may have a chance of selling it elsewhere.”

“Very well,” said Soames. “I agree to that. You shall put it in writing and I will sign.”

“It would perhaps be more regular,” said Mr. Farshaw, as he rose from the table. In the smoking-room, Soames reclined in the most comfortable chair he could find, his habitual air of weariness being, if anything, more marked than usual. Mr. Farshaw wrote a few lines on a sheet of notepaper, drew a rough plan beneath them, and handed it to Soames.

“That’ll do, I should think,” said Mr. Farshaw.

“Thanks,” said Soames, as he examined the paper. On it was written—

“In the event of my purchasing any part of the property referred to in the plan below, and situated in the parish of Salsay Bois, Bucks, I agree to pay to James Edward Farshaw the sum of seventy-five pounds in cash, in consideration of information supplied by him. And in the event of my not purchasing, I agree to make no further use of that information whatever.”

To that was appended this rough plan:—

[map]

And underneath was a space for the signature.

“It wouldn’t satisfy the lawyers,” said Mr. Farshaw; “at least, I suppose not. I’m no lawyer myself, but the meaning is perfectly clear, and it is a memorandum that would be binding on gentlemen.”

“Certainly,” said Soames, in an absent-minded way, as he examined the plan carelessly. “I think I see,” he went on. “The part marked ‘Croft’s field’ is the part I have got to buy, and it is to the future owner of Heriot’s that I have got to sell. By the way, what is the name of the present owner?”

“His name’s Gilfrew.”

“And he won’t buy Croft’s field. Yet he must see that it would add immensely to the value of his property.”

“He sees that all right; but the lunatic doesn’t care. ‘Why should I buy it?’ he said to me. ‘I’ve been here twenty years without having that field, and I’ve never felt the want of it. I bought this place to live in, and not as a speculation, and I hate alterations.’ And you can’t shake him.”

“But this James Gilfrew—”

“How do you know his name’s James?”

“I happen to have a book or two that he wrote. I had heard that he lived as a recluse in the country. It must be the same man. If he won’t buy Croft’s field, could he be induced to sell Heriot’s?”

“No, he won’t do anything—not one single blessed thing. I tried that, too. There’s a very good demand for small residences there just now, and there’s next to no land to be had. If he would have sold Heriot’s, you may be quite sure that I should have bought it. As it was, I was on the verge of buying Croft’s field and waiting for my profit; but—well, I’ve explained all that.”

“Why doesn’t Croft keep his land himself, and sell it to the next owner of Heriot’s?”

“Because Croft, like a good many farmers nowadays, is in want of ready money. He has an idea that the land will be worth something one of these days, and thinks he is asking a pretty stiff price for it. But he has not quite realised that it puts from fifty to a hundred pounds an acre on to the value of the twelve acres behind it.”

“When you gave up the idea of buying, why didn’t Croft go about and find another purchaser?”

“Croft’s not the kind of man that goes about and finds things. Besides, he is by no means sure that I have given the thing up. He has written to me twice about it within the last fortnight, and I’ve put him off.”

Soames looked at the plan again. “You don’t mind me asking all these questions?” he said.

“On the contrary, I particularly want you to ask them. If you buy this land, you must do it on your own responsibility and judgement. I give you the information, but it must be understood that I do not advise. Now, what else can I tell you?”

“You have not marked the position of the house at Heriot’s.”

“No, I’ve not put in any details. The position is very curious, and much what one might have expected from that idiot Gilfrew. He has put the house as far away as possible from the road. Doesn’t like to hear or see his own species, I suppose. You go through three fields before you get to the gardens, and his house is at the end of the gardens, with its back to the road.”

“And the land round Heriot’s?”

“All farmland. Some of it’s Croft’s; some of it’s Belman’s; and some belongs to another chap whose name I’ve forgotten. You’ll find out all about that easily enough when you go down there.”

“Thanks,” said Soames. “I think that’s all. I’ll just sign that document for you.” He rose and went in his turn to the writing-table. Then he gave the signed paper to Mr. Farshaw and sank back in his chair with the air of one who has completed a hard day’s work. Shortly afterwards Mr. Farshaw left to keep an appointment in the City. For a time Soames still remained in his place. His eyes were closed, and it might have been thought that he was asleep. But he was not; he was merely trying, unsuccessfully, to think out a puzzle.

A trap was being laid for him—of that he had never since the beginning of his conversation with Farshaw had the slightest doubt. He was perfectly well aware that Farshaw hated him and wanted to get even with him. He knew it as well as if Farshaw himself had told him so. But he did not quite see what Mr. Farshaw was to make out of it. He was convinced that the £75 commission had simply been an afterthought to provide a reason for making the offer. And he did not see in the least where the trap lay. It was clearly not in the figures, since these could so easily be checked. Indeed, all Farshaw’s statements could easily be checked, and he had nothing to gain by lying in that way. The trap, if there were a trap, would consist, not in what Farshaw had said, but in what he had left out. And that was as far as Soames could get for the present.

On the following morning he called on Croft’s agents. They talked like agents and were of no sort of use to Soames. Then he caught a train to the nearest station to Salsay Bois, and succeeded in interviewing Croft. He was a somnolent and unsatisfactory old farmer. Croft was vague on most points. He said that there had been a Mr. Farshaw, but he didn’t seem to be going on with it. He didn’t answer letters, this Farshaw. The field was a splendid investment, and Croft declared that it was only a series of bad years that forced him to part with it. Soames had much the same feeling that he had had with Farshaw, the feeling that something was being kept back. Soames succeeded in obtaining an option to purchase for a fortnight. Croft was very reluctant here. At last he said, “Well, if at the end of the time you haven’t bought, I shall expect something.” That was arranged, and so far Soames was content; but he had not yet found out where the trap lay.

He found it out next morning when he called on Mr. James Gilfrew, armed with a letter of introduction and three important manuscripts relating to Charles I., of which one was spurious. The manuscripts alone would have constituted sufficient introduction, but Soames liked to do things in their proper order. He remained to luncheon with the eccentric old recluse; by four o’clock in the afternoon, when he left, he had a very fair idea of the trap, and of how to put Mr. James Farshaw into it. Soames, as he travelled back to town, looked the very picture of a man who was at peace with the world.

For a man who tired easily Soames got a good deal done in the course of the next day. He called on Croft’s agents in London and arranged to purchase Croft’s field for considerably less than the sum that had originally been asked. He could and did produce a fair reason why the reduction should be made. They said dejectedly that they would write to their client, and had no doubt that he would be ready under the circumstances to meet Mr. Soames’s views. Then he rushed off to Salsay Bois and had an interview with a much more prosperous farmer, of the name of Belman, who owned the land to the south of Heriot’s. When that was over he returned to London in time to see two solicitors. The next day he rested, and the day following, being Sunday, he rested some more. And on Monday he paid another visit to Mr. Gilfrew, with a document or two in his pocket.

When he was walking back to the station he met something which was not exactly a common object of the country roadside, but nevertheless occasioned him no surprise. It was Mr. Farshaw, suitably dressed in country clothes and walking fast. He saluted Soames with his usual genial smile.

“Come down to look at the place? That’s right. I mustn’t stop. I’m down here on business.”

“I’m afraid,” said Soames wearily, “that you’re a little too late for it.”

Farshaw’s smile vanished. He looked at Soames with suspicion. “How do you know? What do you mean?”

“If you were not going to Heriot’s, I don’t mean anything. If you were, I give you my word that you will save yourself time and trouble by walking back to the station with me. You are too late to do anything. Even if Gilfrew would see you, which I very much doubt, Heriot’s is no longer at his disposal. I’m perfectly willing to tell you the whole story. It would interest me. But I shall expect you to be as candid with me as I am going to be with you.”

“I was half afraid of this,” said Farshaw. “Very well. Go on. Let’s have it.”

“When you gave me that opportunity to invest some money profitably in property here, you forgot one point. I refer to the new road to be made through Belman’s land, skirting the south side of Heriot’s.”

“Croft never told you that. He only suspected it himself.”

“Croft was a monument of discretion, and told me nothing. The new road will be a short cut, the other road makes a big loop just there; it will also be a better road, because the old one is flooded regularly whenever there is a heavy rain. Consequently, when Heriot’s gets a frontage all along the south side, the frontage on the north, where Croft’s field is, must necessarily be of comparatively no importance. In fact, the bottom drops out of the investment that you suggested to me. If I had given £750 for Croft’s field, I should never have seen my money back again. I think you knew all that, and that you tried to put me in the cart, and I think I know why. And I don’t think you were influenced by the commission that you were to make.”

“That’s all right,” said Farshaw genially, and not in the least perturbed. “The game’s up, and I may as well put my cards on the table. You knocked the syndicate of which I was a director for six thousand pounds. It is true that the loss fell on the syndicate, and not on me personally. It is also true that if my advice had been taken you would have got only half that sum. But the fact remained—I am fairly old, and I have always thought that I knew my way about, and I, in company with two other men of experience, had been knocked out of time by a youngster. I did not like it. I wanted to get more or less even with you. You are quite right in supposing that I was not playing for the commission. I had to make my offer to you seem more plausible, and that’s why I spoke of the commission. All I really wanted was to put you in the cart, as you say. I knew Croft and Croft’s agents would tell you nothing. I doubt if they knew that the road would be made so soon; it’s been talked of for a long time. I knew that Gilfrew had said to me some time before that the next person who came and bothered him about the property would be turned out at once, and I think he meant it; also I am pretty sure he did not know about the new road. Belman did, because it practically rested with him whether the road would be made or not. But why should you think of going to him? For that matter, why should you suspect that a new road was likely to be made at all?”

“It’s all very simple. I wasn’t satisfied with Croft. Next day I called on Gilfrew with an excuse connected with the work in which he is interested. I got on very well with him. Shortly before I left, I was admiring his place, and he began at once to tell his sorrows. He had heard the news from Belman, and he was in despair about it. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I can’t stop here now. Their road will run within thirty yards of my windows. And it was only the other day that I missed a chance to sell!’ That was a clear invitation to me. I took advantage of it. I offered to buy if the new road were made. He accepted. I saw Belman about the road next day, and now all is settled.”

“Got Croft’s field, too?”

“Got the whole block right through from road to road. Of course, I didn’t pay Croft anything like the price he asked when he thought I didn’t know anything about the new road.”

“It’s my own fault,” said Farshaw. “I ought to have seen it sooner. It flashed across my mind this morning that the new road would make a great change in that lunatic Gilfrew’s ideas, and that I might have another chance to buy. Oh, I ought to have seen it before! But I was thinking so much about the new road, and the chance of getting you over Croft’s field, that I never saw my own line to take. Of course, as soon as I did think of it I started off at once; and now it’s too late, and I’ve been beaten once again.”

They had reached the railway-station.

“Look here,” Farshaw continued. “If you like, I will give you the sum you have paid for Heriot’s and Croft’s field, and another thousand pounds into the bargain.”

“It sounds a good offer,” said Soames, “but I’ve got fifteen acres very cheap, and I think I can make more by cutting it up. In fact, I’m seeing some building people about it when I get back. They may be willing to work with me or to buy from me. By the way, I have your little commission here.”

“Oh, thanks! Perhaps you wouldn’t mind sending it to the office?”

“Certainly. Here’s our train. Going smoking?”

“Thanks,” said Farshaw grimly. “I think I’ll travel in a compartment by myself. We go through a long tunnel, and I’ve got a very good knife in my pocket. I think I might be tempted.”

AN EXPLORATION ENTERPRISE

Mr. Julius Pembridge was practically the Exploration and Enterprise Finance Association. If you could not get money from Pembridge for your little scheme, it was not worth while to try elsewhere; you might give it up and go home. He was the friend and comforter of wild cats, but he was not a fool. If most of these ungrateful beasts bit and scratched him, now and again one turned out very good. It was said that he lost more money in a year than any man in his street, but that did not disturb him. At the end of the year he had generally made a living, and a little over. Wherever he saw the faintest glimmer of light—the least possibility—in went Julius Pembridge. If he was right once, that more than made up for ten times when he was wrong.

Pembridge was a dominant male man. He was powerfully built, and rather a handsome man, with keen eyes and a strong chin. He had two distinct manners in general use. One was slangy and good-humoured; the other was different. He was content to let the best possible tailor dress him in the best possible way. His office was well lighted and well and solidly furnished; it was an eccentricity of his to have his office as cleanly and properly kept as his private house, which, by the way, was not a house, but a flat in Jermyn Street. He possessed the smartest and most silent office boy within the cab radius.

One fine morning in May, when Pembridge had gone through his correspondence, he was sitting back in his chair and wondering whether it would be worth while to back anything for the Derby, when the office boy brought in a card. It was not an immaculately clean card, and on it was written—not engraved—“Mr. Percy Mardner.” Pembridge held the card by the extreme corner, looking at it through half closed eyes. Then he turned to the boy. “All right,” he said.

The boy placed a chair, put the whisky and soda handy, and went out noiselessly. In a moment he returned and announced Mr. Percy Mardner. Mardner’s appearance was against him. He looked furtive and shabby and shaky. His appearance was that of a man whose nerves have suffered, one who has been a good deal broken up. His eyes blinked as they met the light.

“It’s very good of you to see me, Mr. Pembridge,” said Mardner.

“Not at all,” said Pembridge. “Always glad to see anyone on business.” He spoke genially, but there was a slight emphasis on the word “business,” enough to indicate that a charitable appeal would not be considered in the light of business.

“Well, it’s on business that I wished to speak to you. It’s very queer business and a very queer story that I have to tell. But there’s upwards of a hundred thousand pounds at the end of it.”

“And what made you come to me?”

“I went first to a man whose name I had seen in an advertisement— a money-lender. He wouldn’t let me finish my story. He said it was a fairy tale, and he did not deal in fairy tales. I asked him if he knew of anybody who might help me, and he mentioned your Association, without holding out any great hopes.”

“Go on.”

“I must begin by telling you that I have been in trouble. I yielded to a temptation, and—well, they gave me three years’ penal servitude. I have not been out long. My people gave me a hundred pounds, and told me that was all they would have to do with me.”

“And you blued your hundred on booze.”

“Yes, I have been drinking hard, and gambling a little. But I still have a few pounds left. I was at it last night; that’s why I’m all to pieces this morning.” He looked significantly towards the whisky.

“All right. Help yourself. And get to the business as soon as you can; in fact, tell me what it is before you go on with your yarn.”

Percy Mardner poured out a great deal of whisky and a very little soda-water. The glass clattered against his teeth as he drank. Then he wiped his ragged moustache with his hand and resumed with more confidence of manner.

“Thank you, Mr. Pembridge; that’s done me good. Ill tell you the business at once; only don’t send me away until I’ve told you the story as well. The business is buried treasure—money buried in a little piece of land that is for sale at this moment.”

“Ah!” said Pembridge reflectively. “You seem a particularly candid person. One might have said shameless. You speak of the fact that you are an ex-convict who has taken to drink, very much as another man might describe himself as a stockbroker. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me, to save time and trouble, whether this is a variation on the Spanish prisoner swindle, or something on the gold brick lines—or, in short, what is it you have been getting up for me?”

“I knew you would say something of that kind. When you hear the story you will see that I do not stand to make a single penny unless my story is absolutely true. You give me nothing in advance.”

“Well, well,” said Pembridge impatiently, “get on.”

“While I was in prison I rendered a service to a fellow-convict; in fact, I helped him to escape. He got clear away to America, and a few weeks ago I got a letter from him. He said that he was dying, and that he would tell me something which might be useful to me, for there was no longer any chance that he would be able to go in for it himself, and I had once done him a good turn. This man had been a poacher and had pretty nearly killed two keepers. It was while he was living in a Sussex village that he learned what he afterwards told me. In that village there lived two brothers. They were supposed to be wealthy, but they lived in an ordinary labourer’s cottage with a bit of garden at the back, and in the most miserly possible manner. They did everything for themselves, and no one but themselves ever entered the cottage. They were quarrelsome and eccentric; for instance, they divided the night into watches, and one slept while the other watched. Though they grudged every farthing that they spent, and practically half-starved themselves, they kept a light burning all night in the kitchen always. They lived in the village for twenty years, and died within a week of one another; one of them was carried off by pneumonia one hard winter, and the other hanged himself when he got home from the funeral. It was found out that all those twenty years they had been in receipt of an income of two thousand eight hundred pounds each under their father’s will. In each case the money producing this income was left in trust to the son for life, and afterwards, if he bad no children, to different hospitals and charitable institutions. It was shown that these two men drew the whole, or nearly the whole, of their income from the bank every year, and always drew it in gold. They had not spent it, for it was doubtful if they spent fifty pounds a year between them; and no trace of any investment could be found. Both men died intestate, and the cottage and garden, with about a hundred pounds that was in the bank, went to a relative, a man called Jordan. Of course he tried to find out where the savings of twenty years had gone to. He had the whole cottage pulled down, under his own inspection, and the whole of the garden dug up, and found nothing. Then he decided that the savings had been invested, and spent a lot of money in trying to trace them. That was no good, either. Jordan rebuilt the cottage, and left the place on his death, which happened about a year later, to an old woman who had acted as his housekeeper. She is willing to sell—I have just been down there—and I want you to buy, and then share and share alike with me in what we find there.”

“At present,” said Pembridge, “there doesn’t seem to be the slightest earthly prospect that we should find anything.”

“That,” said Mardner, “is where my friend the poacher comes in. It was always his conviction, in spite of the search that failed, that the money was hidden in the garden. The cottage stands on the road, and the garden slopes rather sharply downwards behind it until it joins a plantation. There may, perhaps, be a third of an acre of this garden altogether, and, of course, when the two old men were working in it they were out of sight of anybody who might happen to be passing in the road. A few months before they died my friend happened to be coming home very early one summer morning about half an hour before dawn. He came through the plantation, and as he got to the edge of it he looked up the garden and saw that the back door of the cottage was open and a light showing in it. At that moment out came the two brothers; the first was carrying on his back a small sack—the kind of thing that would take half a hundredweight of coals—and was bent nearly double under it; the other carried a coil of rope and a lantern. They came right down to the bottom of the garden, where a high yew hedge hid them. Not a word was said, but my friend the poacher heard a spade being used. He had half a mind to call out to them, and ask them what they were up to, but there was a special reason why he did not want anybody to know that he was not in bed and asleep that night, and so he passed on. He never thought much about the incident until after the death of the old men, when the talk about the buried treasure began, and then he kept his own counsel. He got himself taken on at the job of pulling down the cottage, and there he found in the roof a number of bags that had been used for Portland cement. Then he tumbled to it.”

“Well, I don’t,” said Pembridge.

“At some time or other the two brothers must have wanted a lot of concrete; that’s what they had the cement for; the gravel they could get anywhere in the garden simply for the trouble of digging for it. Now, there was no concrete at all used anywhere about the cottage. But concrete’s fine stuff to make an underground cellar with—say at the bottom of a garden by a high yew hedge. It keeps out the damp, and you can store your sacks of anything in it—sacks of gold, for instance. But it is not all guesswork. When Jordan had pulled down the cottage and found nothing, he was discouraged. He began to dig up the garden, but the further he went the more discouraged he got. By the time that they had got to the lower end of the garden the thing was being done very slackly. They dug very shallow, and often, to save a fruit tree, they would leave a bit untouched. By this time Jordan had the idea that the money was not buried at all, but was invested; and this digging was costing money. My friend was digging by the yew hedge, and there was nobody to look after him much; he felt his spade come down on concrete—there wasn’t a doubt about it. He said nothing. A week later he was fool enough to have that row with the keepers, and that finished him. He got seven years, and when he escaped, this country wasn’t healthy for him. But he meant to come back one of these days and to have the money.”

Mardner paused and finished his drink at a draught. “Well,” he resumed, “there’s the story, and it’s the truth, every word of it. What are you going to do, Mr. Pembridge?”

“I’ll do it,” said Pembridge—“on terms.”

“What terms?”

“To start with, I must have all the names given me now, and I must have a week to investigate your story.”

“I’m not afraid of that.”

“Secondly, if I go in for it, all that we find will be declared.”

“But then we lose it all. Don’t you know what the law is?”

“I do, and also what the custom is. If the sum is anything like what you suppose, there will be enough for you in any case.”

“I don’t know what you mean by enough,” said Mardner querulously.

“We share alike. What’s enough for me has got to be enough for you. If you don’t like that, clear out and take your yarn somewhere else.”

“All right. Of course, I can’t help myself.”

“The third condition is also important. I don’t much care to go into any partnership with a man of your stamp. I don’t trust you, and I don’t like you. You will have to leave the direction of the matter entirely to me. I shall treat you as a servant, and you will have servant’s work to do; you will address me as a servant would. If we are fortunate, and there is anything to divide, you can take your share and go to the devil your own way. Until then you have got to do what you are told, or I don’t help you.”

“As I said before, Mr. Pembridge, I’ve no choice.”

“Then address me properly. Now, then, give me all the names, and I’ll go into this. And, by the way, whatever your poaching friend saw the old man carrying in that sack, it was not sovereigns. You can make up your mind to that.”

•   •   •

A week later the abnormally intelligent office boy once more ushered Mardner into Mr. Pembridge’s room. Mardner had changed a little. He was less shabby, and in dress and manner was a good enough imitation of a servant to suggest to Pembridge that this had once been his walk in life. He was also noticeably less shaky.

“Well, I’ve been into this,” said Pembridge, “and I find that your story is substantially correct. I have also been down to Shadenham, and have been able to pick up one or two pieces of additional information. So far, so good.”

“Then, sir, if I might suggest,” said Mardner, “I think the next step to take is to buy the property in our joint names.”

“You needn’t trouble about that,” said Pembridge. “The property is already bought in my name.”

“You’re trying to do me,” said Mardner truculently.

“Not in the least. If there is anything to divide we shall share equally, so long as you keep to the conditions that I have laid down. I have not the least intention of doing you, as you so prettily put it, but neither do I intend to let you do me. The land’s my property—not yours. Behave yourself, and that will make no difference to you. Give me any trouble, and I will have you thrown out. I’ve got the whip-hand. See?”

Mardner looked sulky, but became civil. He whined a little. It was quite natural that he should be suspected, but he hoped to be able to show that the suspicions were quite needless. If he didn’t act on the square, he wished his hands might drop off at the roots.

“Don’t talk that kind of rubbish. You’ll act on the square, because you will get no chance to do anything else. Now, then, we start for Shadenham tomorrow, and there’s not much time to lose. Hold your tongue and listen to the instructions I am going to give you.”

•   •   •

Pembridge and Mardner, who travelled as his servant, put up at the only inn in Shadenham. It was conveniently near to the plot of ground where it was supposed that the misers had buried their money; it was not comfortable, though, and expensive discomfort annoyed Pembridge.

“Look here,” he said on the morning after their arrival, “how long is this going to take, Mardner?”

“Not more than three or four hours. I’ve taken the tools over and I’m quite ready to start. I know where to dig, and my friend in his letter said it was not more than three feet down. Of course, if we were both going to dig—”

“We’re not. My work will come in afterwards. For the present I will confine myself to keeping an eye on you. Well, if we get through in that time, it will be all right. I don’t want another night here. Come along, then.”

The cottage stared at them with blindless windows. The old housekeeper had removed her belongings two days before, and straw and other litter lay about on the cinder paths. They passed down the garden to the yew hedge at the bottom. Mardner looked around him. “This is it, I think.”

“Go ahead, then,” said Pembridge. A rustic seat had been fixed under an old apple tree close by, and there he established himself, with the morning papers and his cigarettes. Mardner took off his coat and waistcoat and laid into the work with a will. He was obviously excited. It was a quiet morning; the blows of the pick and the scrape of the spade came with monotonous regularity, and the only other sound to be heard was the song of the birds or the rustle of Pembridge’s paper. Pembridge had finished his second newspaper before a word was spoken. Then Mardner threw down his spade and said, “I’m fully four feet down here, and there isn’t a sign. I think I should try nearer the hedge, sir.”

“Then, so far, you’ve done nothing but waste time. Try again, of course. And for goodness’ sake get it right this time. We haven’t all the day to spare for your blunders, you know.”

Mardner made no answer. In another minute he was working as hard as ever. The perspiration streamed from him and his breathing was loud and laboured. But he never stopped for one moment; the fever of the chase was on him. He worked as if he were working for his life.

And once more he worked to no purpose; the second attempt at location was a failure also. Pembridge, gloomy and sarcastic, left his place and came over to Mardner. He was studiously unpleasant and insulting, and Mardner remained as studiously respectful; but Mardner’s face when he was turned away from Pembridge was not pretty—it was the face of a dangerous man.

Mardner resumed his digging, and Pembridge went back to his seat. For a while he dozed, and then the midges worried and woke him. He had finished his newspapers and he was inexpressibly bored. For the sake of something to do he walked up to the cottage and went over it. It was a fairly new and quite commonplace building. But the country around was pretty, and the quiet was rather pleasant as a change from the City. As he had bought the place, it might be worth while to spend a little money on it, and use it for Saturdays to Mondays in the summer. There would probably be some fishing procurable. It was a pity the golf links were not nearer. Yes, it was worth thinking about. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was half-past two. He had had no idea that it was so late; it was time to go and eat an abominable luncheon at that incompetent inn. And then, as he glanced out of window, he saw Mardner running up the path towards the cottage.

Pembridge met him in the doorway. “Well?” he said brusquely, as Mardner came up.

“I’ve got it,” said Mardner, panting.

“Then why the deuce couldn’t you have got it before?” He showed no sign of satisfaction. “Well, come and show me it.” Mardner led the way to a hole big enough for a man to work in, and about three feet deep. At the bottom of the hole was a bed of concrete, that might have been the roof of an underground cellar.

“Yes,” said Pembridge, “that looks like it. Now, then, put on your coat and waistcoat, and come back to the inn for lunch.”

“Excuse me, sir,” said Mardner. “If you don’t mind, I would sooner go straight on. I’ve got the spike and hammer here for the concrete. I don’t want anything to eat myself. I’d a good breakfast. I should have the thing opened by the time you came back.”

“I don’t doubt,” said Pembridge, “that you are well trained for working hard on very little food. But considering the circumstances under which you got that training, I won’t have that concrete opened except when I am here.”

“Very well, sir,” said Mardner. And he turned to put on his coat. Once more he looked dangerous.

•   •   •

It was past three when the work was resumed, and the job proved longer than they had expected. The earth was loose and gravelly, and the sides of the hole had to be roughly shored up; the concrete was hard and thick, and Mardner was not used to this kind of work. It was already dark before enough of the concrete had been broken away for a man’s body to pass through.

“Now, then,” said Pembridge, “fasten your lantern to a string and give it to me. I’m going to see what there is down there.”

He remained for some minutes on his knees peering down the hole, and taking no notice of the excited questioning of Mardner. Then he stood up and drew the lantern up again.

“Yes,” he said. “I see what it is. It’s a well which had run dry and been disused. The old men found it, and thought it a safer place to hide their treasure in than the cottage. The well must have been partly filled up with rubbish, and they put concrete over it; the walls are concrete, too. With the concrete roof over it, and three feet of earth on the top of that, it doesn’t make a bad sort of cash-box. I can make out two sacks and some smaller bags lying on the floor, and that’s about twelve feet down. We’ve got rope enough?”

“Plenty, sir.”

“Very well, the place looks perfectly dry, and I suppose the air’s all right, as the lamp did not go out. You can fasten one end of the rope round that tree and, let yourself down as soon as you like.”

Mardner had a little accident while he was fixing the rope; in moving his tools out of the way he dropped his pick down the shaft.

“What a clumsy fool you are!” said Pembridge. Mardner mumbled something and prepared for the descent. His hands were blistered and bleeding with the work that he had been doing, and the rough rope cut into them; but he was hardly conscious of the pain. The moment was coming.

“All right,” he called from the bottom of the shaft.

Pembridge came rapidly down the rope after him. He looked quickly at the sacks; Mardner had not touched them.

“Now, then,” said Pembridge, “I’m going to make an inventory of what we find here before we hand it all over to the police.”

He opened the first sack. It contained some exquisite pieces of old silver, wrapped in washleather and packed in sawdust.

“Ah,” he said, as he unpacked them and noted them down, “those old men did not make a bad investment. This kind of thing is worth far more now than when it was bought. And they seem to have only bought really fine pieces. When I’ve finished with this sack, you will pack it up again while I am going through the next. The gold will be in the small bags.”

“Very well, sir,” said Mardner. His face and hands were twitching nervously; the moment had come. As Pembridge bent over the sack to take out the last piece, Mardner, without a sound, lifted the pick from the floor.

He got a good grip and raised the pick high above his head and brought it down straight—there was no room to swing it. There was a crash among the silver, and a curious gulping sound. And Pembridge was dead. Mardner stooped down and began to move the silver out of the mess. As he did this he knocked over the lamp and was left in darkness.

Then quite suddenly his nerves went. He had no matches, and his one idea was to get out and get a light as soon as possible. Pembridge had matches, but Mardner did not dare to look for them on the dead man’s body. He caught hold of the rope and began to climb. The rope fell coiling over his head; the rough edges of the concrete on which it played had frayed it. Mardner was trapped.

There was nothing else to be done; he had to feel for the matches that Pembridge carried. He bent down and stretched out a hand. It went on the dead man’s face, and after that Mardner did not dare to move at all. He remained huddled against the wall until, next morning, the search-party from the inn found him.

“UNLIKELIES”

The Unlikely Mine is not its real name, but it bears some resemblance to the sound of the real name, and has replaced it for common or City use. And it certainly is just about the unlikeliest mine in New Zealand.

When it was offered to the public, Mr. Horace Fall, J.P., read the prospectus, and observed that here was an enterprise which only demanded a moderate capital. If the mine had been all that fancy and the expert painted it, this view would have been correct. But the rest of the investing public seemed to be possessed with the idea that a thing that was worth nothing was dear at twopence. And so it happened that when Mr. Horace Fall applied for two thousand ordinary pound shares, he got—to his pain and surprise—the whole two thousand allotted to him. He paid for them and put them away in his safe. He could have bought them for eight shillings apiece a few months later.

Fall was a man of some means, and the loss, though serious, was not enough to affect his health or his manner of living. The reasons why a year afterwards he cut his throat had nothing to do with “Unlikelies” or with this story. He bequeathed to his intelligent and hard-working niece, Dora Merton, his holding in “Unlikelies,” and also Consols producing an income of about £200.

Dora Merton had taken the equivalent of a fairly high degree at Cambridge; but she had been expected to do much better, and it was thought either that she had been lazy, or that she had not worked with discretion. The latter, from an examination point of view, was true enough. She was a little, mouse-like woman, with brown hair and white teeth, neither plain enough to be ugly, nor pretty enough to be beautiful. She was very quiet, and her manner suggested a timidity that she did not possess. For a short time she was governess to the family of a stockbroker; then—partly through his influence, generously used when he saw her rather remarkable capabilities—she obtained a more remunerative employment, doing difficult statistical work for an insurance company. Her favourite reading was the principal financial articles, and she could distinguish between solid sense and the other thing. As a rule, wise men of business do not talk much business out of hours, and do not talk it to women at all. But she had a few intimate friends who had begun by chaffing her for her unfeminine interests, and had ended by respecting her knowledge and capability. She did not bother them for tips; she did not want half an hour of serious discussion on the grave question whether or not the moment had arrived for selling five Lake Views. In a word, she was not as other women. She did not speculate, in spite of her interest in speculation; she had no money to play about with. And she had ideas; men that she knew had more than once found them to be profitable ideas.

The death of her Uncle Horace did not greatly afflict her. All that she knew of him was that he had quarrelled with her father. She had never expected him to leave her a penny; she took the legacy as a way of saying that he limited his ill-will to the period of his lifetime. What was she to do with it?

She was an independent mouse, living in her own flat in Bloomsbury, going her own ways, forming her own opinions. She made her own inquiries as to “Unlikelies,” and she formed her own decision as to the line to take. It was only then that she wrote a note to Peter Bafray. Bafray was a sardonic person of thirty-three. He was tall, and almost grotesquely ugly in a strong, clean-shaven way. The Bafrays and Mertons had been friends for two generations, and Peter and Dora had, at a considerably previous period, bowled hoops together. Peter was now a solicitor in partnership with his father, and possessed of more money than is good for a single man. To him, knowing him to be a loyal friend and no fool, the mouse wrote as follows:—

Dear Peter

Please dine with me at the Twentieth
Club on Saturday at eight. I’ve got something rather in your line, and we can talk it over. We shall be alone.

Yours ever,

Dora Merton

The Twentieth is a ladies’ club, and very pretty in its interior, being all white and purple and gold, with Corinthian pillars where they are required and also elsewhere. The male guest goes to the upstairs dining-room. It was in a corner of this room that Dora and Peter dined.

“And what about the business?” Peter asked when dinner was half over.

“Well,” said Dora, “to begin with, have you got any money?”

“Just borrowed my cab-fare from my man.”

“No, but really?”

“I dare say I might be able to find some,” Peter admitted reluctantly.

“That’s all right. Then I am going to tell you about a little scheme of mine that I want you to join me in. To begin with, I must tell you that I am now an heiress in a small way, through the death of that wicked old man, Uncle Horace.”

She told him all about her legacy. “Now,” she continued, “what do you think I ought to do?”

“If you were an ordinary woman I should tell you to sell your ‘Unlikelies’ for whatever they will fetch, and buy some more Consols with the money. But you are not an ordinary woman. You would keep an eye on your investments; you don’t want to go to sleep on them. Of course, I still say, Sell your ‘Unlikelies.’ They are quite neglected, and I doubt if they will ever go any better. But Consols are not good enough for you. You’d better come out of them, and try to get a few first-class mortgages—that would make a bill of costs for us, you know, and perhaps you might—but what’s the use of my talking? You’ve made up your mind already.”

“Yes,” said the mouse. “At least, I’ve thought of something. But you may not like it. I sell the Consols, of course, but I keep the ‘Unlikelies,’ and I buy more ‘Unlikelies’ with the money that I get for the Consols.”

“That sounds like madness, but I won’t say that you’re wrong until I hear the rest of the story. The mine’s not a good property, it is not well managed, it has never paid a dividend, and most people think it never will. Is it worth it?”

“Is the price of a thing on a Stock Exchange regulated by what it’s worth, or even by what the public think it’s worth? What about the time when the bears were caught short of N. P. Commons?”

“There you are talking. But are we big enough to run a corner? And do we know how to do it? You see, you’ve got to make your bears before you can trap them.”

“True. I’ll give you the scheme. I’m not prepared to put every penny I possess into it, but I will put in a good deal. If you like it, you will put in two-thirds as much, and undertake all the business details—I’m too busy at the office to attend to them—and if there are any profits we will share them equally. Will you have any more wine? No? Then we’ll come to the lounge, where you can smoke and listen.”

In the lounge they talked eagerly, argued, calculated. At the end of an hour Peter had accepted the scheme and the partnership.

“Well,” he said, as he rose, answering a previous question of hers, “it’s difficult to particularise, but I should say that Way to Wealth was about the absolute rottenest. But there will be no difficulty in finding financial organs to serve our purpose. I’ll begin on Monday. Will you be at the mater’s Wednesday?”

“No; I can’t get away from the office in the afternoon.”

“You might give that up now.”

“But I shan’t. The work interests me. And I can’t get it to do unless I work properly; besides, it will be something to fall back upon when the corner bursts up.”

Peter Bafray laughed and said good-night.

•   •   •

On Monday, Peter Bafray called at the excessively shabby office of Way to Wealth, and interviewed the excessively shabby manager of that dishonest organ.

“I have been told,” said Peter, “that you have exceptional facilities for making inquiries into the value of mining properties.”

“That is so,” said the manager gravely.

“If, in the course of investigation, you came across anything which could be said for ‘Unlikelies,’ it would make an interesting editorial item for your paper; and a friend of mine, who has a considerable holding, would be prepared to defray the cost of the investigation.”

This was very nicely and delicately put, but the manager was not delicate, and did not make an unnecessary fuss about these things.

“What you want,” he said, “is a ten-line puff in two issues, to come under ‘The Man in the Market’—one of our best features. Well, we can do that at—” and he proceeded to quote his tariff for his conscience. It was most moderate.

The paragraphs duly appeared. The first began: “Those who clung patiently to their ‘Unlikelies’ are, we understand, about to be richly rewarded. We have received private advices that show that the mine is a splendid property, not over-capitalised, and would have been on the dividend-paying list long ago but for mismanagement. A sharp rise is intended in very strong quarters for next account. Speculators will take the hint and get in early. The good news has been kept very dark, but from what we happen to know we should think the shares cheap at £3.”

One or two of the other inferior financial organs were also impressed with the chances of “Unlikelies,” their inspiration also being directly derived from Peter Bafray for a consideration.

Now, it is wrong to think that favourable notices in papers of this class have no effect on dealers, supposing that the dealers happen to see the notices. They incline the man who knows to a very pessimistic view of the company that requires such rotten support, and Peter Bafray and Dora Merton were particularly anxious to discredit the buying of “Unlikelies” which was to follow.

Briefly, the partners disguised themselves as a herd of weak bulls. In the course of the next few days, about thirty people, with different names and dealing with different brokers, made purchases of “Unlikelies.” The thirty were simply dummies—different incarnations of the partners. At the back of them all were Peter Bafray and Dora Merton.

Purchases of this description, following a prelude of bought puff notices, did not greatly affect the market in “Unlikelies.” It looked exactly like the silly speculator with no money, and jobbers who took this view had it confirmed later. A lithographed postcard was sent round on the following lines: “A friend who has your interests at heart strongly recommends an immediate purchase of ‘Unlikelies.’” One or two jobbers who had received these cards joked about them, but they had their effect, and the effect was precisely what was intended by the cards—to discredit the buying and to provoke solid people to sell a bear.

At the end of the account the weak bulls began, with one consent, to carry over; not a single share was lifted. At the same time Way to Wealth came out with another paragraph to the effect that “Unlikelies” would be worth £10 apiece before Christmas. It was too tempting. More than one jobber sold an absolute bear, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred they would have been right. Peter Bafray and Dora Merton took what they offered, and began to feel a little easier in their minds; it was going all right.

The same tactics were pursued at the end of the next account. It looked, as it was meant to look, as if the bulls were in a very bad way. The jobbers carried over, but they made the rate pretty stiff. And again they sold, and Bafray and Miss Merton took all they could get. It became a popular tip to sell a few “Unlikelies” and make your holiday expenses. That tended to check the more important selling of the bigger people. It began to be whispered that the bearing of “Unlikelies” had been overdone. About this time men at his club found Peter Bafray slightly absent-minded. He seemed always to be thinking of something else.

Dora dined at the house of Peter’s father, and Peter had some talk with his partner afterwards in the drawing-room. He did not look much gloomier than usual, but the figures that he showed Miss Merton were not entirely satisfactory.

“Well, there it is,” he said. “We’ve not got as many shares as we thought we should, and, to my mind, we’ve got as many as we need. It may come all right. The bears will be short of stock, of course, and they will have a good deal to find. But it’s not quite the certainty that we had hoped. Upon my word, I almost wish I hadn’t put you in it.”

“It was rather the other way.”

“No, you wouldn’t have gone on if I had known enough to stop you. In dealings like this you can’t absolutely depend on anything. A whisper or a wet day may affect the feeling of the market—or, on the other hand, it may not. It was outside my line of business, and I ought to have let it alone and persuaded you to let it alone, too. My word! I wonder what the governor would say if he knew!”

At that moment the elder Bafray came up and inquired genially what the conspiracy was.

At half-past four the following afternoon the partners met in Oxford Street by chance.

“You look depressed,” said Peter.

“So I am,” said Dora. “It’s something at the office—a question of figures—it wouldn’t interest you, I am afraid.”

“And in the meantime, have you seen the papers?”

“No, I’ve not looked at them. I’ve had this thing on my mind. It’s one of those cases where you can see that there is a mistake, but you cannot find out where it is. I’ve been doing sums in my sleep all night.”

“I, on the other hand, have seen the papers, and a few interesting telegrams. I have also talked with a few interesting people, including a director of ‘Unlikelies.’ Providence is watching over us, and we are all right. Come and have tea at that place in Bond Street—we can afford it.” He stopped a passing hansom.

“Strictly speaking,” said Dora, “I was going back to my flat to have another turn at those figures.”

“You’ve done with them for ever. You’ll never do any work again.”

“I think I should hate that.” But she got into the cab.

“Well, when this is all finished, I don’t quite see myself going to an office at ten every morning. No, I think I’ll do nothing for about twenty years, and then go after the bears again—put the screw on, grind them to powder, and blow them away, which is precisely what we are going to do now.”

“No, Peter, we’re not,” said the mouse quietly. “We make a lot of money—an awful lot—anyway, if the bears are really caught, as you tell me. That will do. We’re not going to ruin anybody.”

“They wouldn’t have thought twice about ruining us, if they had had the chance.”

“They would have done what they liked; then why shouldn’t we do what we like? You don’t want to ruin people.”

“Not as a rule. Still, if they will come in my way—”

“You took a fair amount of trouble to get them there.”

“True. Anyhow, it’s your scheme. And we can afford to be merciful. Ah! here we are.”

In the tea-shop Peter told her how it was that they could afford to be merciful.

“It’s simply a gigantic stroke of luck. I won’t say that it has saved us, because I don’t think we should have been beaten altogether in any case. But I own I was a bit nervous, but now I am not. Briefly, the ‘Unlikely’ has struck it rich. I’ve seen a good many cablegrams, and they don’t all tell the same story. According to the more flamboyant of them, ‘rich’ is hardly the word. You would imagine that the ore had stopped, and they were going on with plain gold—cutting it out in slabs, and nothing more to do but blow the dust off. It’s certain they are on to something good, but how good and how long it will last I can’t say, and I don’t care. There are influential people buying ‘Unlikelies,’ and that is all we want. I’ve taken up our shares and paid for them. The bears are in no end of a stew, and are trying to cover themselves, and are not doing it. We bought a fairly big block, at five shillings a time. They were bidding £3, and not getting them, this afternoon. They’ve come on strength where they expected to find weakness; and in addition, the luck is not being good to them. The public will start buying tomorrow. And we are on the very best velvet.”

“It’s a pity there’s such a thing as luck!” said Dora. “If this deal had simply been a question of figures and of accurate judgement of the way the market would view things, it would have been so much more satisfactory.”

“But there is such a thing as luck,” said Peter drily. “I’m sorry, of course, but we’ve got to put up with it.”

Dora laughed. “Of course it must sound idiotic. I’ve made a fortune, and yet I grumble. Still, there is a peculiar satisfaction in seeing a thing work out practically just as you had calculated it would in theory.”

“You’re wonderful!” said Peter. “Have you ever thought of the possibility that I might ask you to marry me?”

“No,” she said rather impatiently; “that kind of thing doesn’t interest me at all, either to think about or to talk about.”

“I don’t see why on earth it shouldn’t interest you.”

“If it comes to that, I don’t see why my feelings on a subject like that should interest you.”

“Because I wish to marry you,” said Peter gravely.

“But it won’t break your heart when I refuse you, as I do definitely and finally?”

“No; that is one of the reasons why you should not refuse me.”

“I don’t see it.”

“We are both fairly literal people; we do not believe much in romance; we do not—” But here Dora interrupted him.

“No, we may have points in common, but that’s not one of them. I do believe in romance, and I have no belief in marriage without it. But I do believe that I have no capacity for romance; education has knocked it out of me; my interests are not there. I’m human enough—I’m far less cynical and merciless than you are—but I am not feminine enough. I can’t risk the joys of my present independence for others which are—well, problematical. I won’t say a word against marriage, or hear a word against it. For most women it’s all right; but I am outside that kind of thing.”

“Yet you can take risks. You have just risked a few thousand pounds—practically all you had—and you are going to be a rich woman in consequence. The partnership has begun well—why not continue it?”

“I’m satisfied with the results of the scheme; indeed, they will enable me to carry out an idea I have had next my heart for a long time. But I am not satisfied with my part in it. You have done the really difficult thing. It is easy enough to make a scheme which looks all right on paper, but you have carried it out to success in reality; and that I could never have done. If I had tried it, they would have turned on me and refused to carry over stuff that was only one remove, if that, from the rubbish-heap; you saw that and worked up enough appearance of an active market. You, as a solicitor, could find plenty of people who were willing to let you deal in their names and through their different brokers; there again I should have been in a fix; and even you have done much less for us than luck has done. I am pleased with the deal, but I can’t feel proud of it. No, this has been a lesson to me; it will be my last speculation.”

There was a minute’s silence, during which the mouse gazed pensively at her gloves.

“I suppose,” said Peter, “a penny wouldn’t tempt you?”

“What for? Oh, for my thoughts, of course. I don’t mind. I was thinking about that thing that’s worrying me—the figures at the office, you know.”

“And will you remain at the office? Or are you going to get a job at a ‘Pearce and Plenty’?”

“Don’t be bitter. I’m not going to do either. I will tell you. We have calculating machines, you know. They’re pretty good, but I don’t think the last word in calculating machines has been said yet. I’ve an idea in my mind for something which will do more, do it better, and do it more quickly. I’ve got the money now to work it out; it will cost a good deal to get the different models made that I shall want, and it will take a good many years’ work. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Yes,” said Peter, “I was right. You’re wonderful!”

•   •   •

The bears were finally let out on terms which were generally acknowledged to be generous, but were certainly not quixotic. Peter did his best to save everybody, but when very little boys will get playing with very big boys there is every chance that the little boys may get hurt accidentally.

One little boy who got hurt very badly over the deal was not a jobber at all, but an outside speculator, and also the manager of that seventeenth-rate rag Way to Wealth. He it was who had penned in his organ those two beautiful and thrilling passages with regard to the brilliant future of “Unlikelies.” But in his private capacity he had sold a considerable bear of them. Almost more bitter than his ruinous loss was the duty which devolved on him of sitting down to write a triumphant leader, headed “Who was Right?” and pointing out how his paper had justified its name, and those who had taken its repeated advice of a few weeks before would now be rich men.

Peter informed his father as to the deal and its success, and the elder Bafray said a few words (for about one hour and a half) on the folly and criminality of going outside your legitimate business. Peter listened with every appearance of attention and politeness. He is still unmarried, and is in the habit of saying that he only met one woman in his life who was clever enough to be worth asking, and she was too clever to accept him.

The boom in “Unlikelies” did not continue, and it is to be feared that some of the cablegrams sent over were slightly exaggerated. If you wish to secure a few, I know a man who expressed, the other day, his willingness to part with his little lot of three hundred for an old knife.

And Dora Merton is still working at her new calculating machine.

RUINED

Punctually to its time, the 9.37 a.m. up train hurried into the station, and the suburban crowd rushed at it. There was a fusillade of banging doors, and the engine, snorting impatiently, dragged the congested train on again. Many passengers were standing, and there was an overflow meeting in the guard’s van. There was a little ineffective grumbling, but a more general tendency to regard a railway company as a natural law, before which the only correct attitude was one of patient resignation. The suburb was badly served and the accommodation was insufficient; it had always been so; it would always be so. But was poor, mortal man to contend with a great, divine railway company? Certainly not. The very thought seemed almost irreverent. Occasionally a clerk, in a moment of mad rebellion, would observe to a passenger who happened to be standing on another man’s feet at the time, that the Company did not do them over well, and that more trains would be a convenience. But humble submission was the more general note.

But whatever might happen to others, Mr. Graham Ventnor was never crowded. A first class compartment was reserved for him and his friends. No resident in the suburb would have ventured to profane the privacy of that apartment; they were respectful people. On one occasion, when Mr. Ventnor was a few moments late, and the train was being kept back for him, a stranger, desperate in his search for a seat, ventured to enter the sacred precincts. The guard, the stationmaster, and a porter were on his trail at once; they were perfectly polite, but they managed to make that stranger understand that he had done a shameful thing; and, of course, they removed him. “No room in any of the other firsts? Very sorry, sir, but we can’t help that. This compartment is strictly reserved for Mr. Ventnor and his party.” And Mr. Ventnor’s party, awaiting his arrival, glared at the outcast.

Mr. Ventnor thoroughly enjoyed respect and the other signs that he was a personage. But it must not be thought that he was bumptious or peremptory in his manner. On the contrary, he was full of smiling geniality. His was the good humour of a man whose position is assured, and his vanity was no more than normal. He was thought well of in his little world, and that pleased him; he could not always be reminding himself that his suburb constituted a very little world indeed. He was popular among those who served him, as much for his kindly ways as for his generous gifts. When the stationmaster’s baby was ill, Mr. Ventnor never forgot to inquire. He always had a word on the situation for that keen politician the guard of the 9.37. His equals found him a pleasant companion, but nobody found him an intimate friend. The social manner was absolutely unbreakable; even that privileged circle that shared the reserved carriage in the morning had never penetrated behind it. “He’s a very good chap,” said Sharman, the broker, “and I’ve known him for twenty years. But if I ever wanted a little help, I should feel that I didn’t know him well enough to ask for it. You get on well enough with him up to a certain point, and then there’s a cut-off; you never get any further.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Mr. Lardner, K.C., “that there is any further to get. I’m inclined to think that we know all that there is. I believe that if you did want help, he would give you it; and, which is rather important, he would not talk about it.”

“I quite believe that. But all the same I should not like to ask him for it. He’d give it, but he’d never respect you again.”

“Well,” said Lardner, laughing, “you needn’t worry about it. You’re not likely to want the help. According to all I hear, you people are making money hand over fist just now. Lucky beggars!”

“The public’s on the feed, and we’re not standing idle. That’s all true enough. But then, with us, the more business we have, the greater the risk that we run.”

“That’s it,” said Lardner. “It wouldn’t be you if you weren’t grumbling.”

“I don’t grumble exactly; but times like these make one nervous. People forget that when we make money, it is in driblets; and when we lose it, it is in big lumps. I wish things were rather quieter; they’re going too fast.”

Sharman always looked anxious and worried. His pessimistic tendencies were rather a joke with Ventnor and Lardner. He was a little man with a big family and a good business; he gave the impression that both the family and the business were too large for him. Barstow, who made up the party in the reserved carriage, never joined in the chaff. He was a solemn man; he was interested in his business in Mincing Lane and in his garden—he was fond of gardening and spent a good deal of money on his place; though out of a proper feeling of respect for the practical king of the suburb, he employed one man less than Mr. Graham Ventnor.

Day after day these four men travelled to the City together, and in the evening returned together. They represented the cream of the suburb; they were supposed to be the four wealthiest men in it. I would not imply that the suburb thought of nothing but money, but it did value the qualities or the opportunities that could make money without getting into trouble. The four men were on the best of terms, and their wives were on the best of terms also. They dined together with fair regularity. In good works and local politics the eight were as one. The supremacy of Ventnor was never disputed. It was for him to head the subscription list, to take the chair, and to have his name on the bills as patron. In years and presence he was the superior of the other three. He was a tall man, erect and alert in spite of his sixty years. He was still a handsome man, and he carried himself well and dressed with absolute correctness. He had lived longer in the suburb; he spent more money, it was beyond argument.

But what Sharman had said was perfectly true. Ventnor had a limit of intimacy beyond which no one was allowed to pass. The three men who met him constantly and travelled to and fro with him every working day did not know him really.

•   •   •

In another respect Sharman had been right. The boom, after the manner of booms, had suddenly turned into a slump. One important failure had involved the downfall of some minor firms. The public performed its usual financial operation. It had bought when prices were high; it now sold when prices were low. The first part of that operation had been sheer fatuousness, but the second part was frequently a matter of necessity. Sharman looked more worried and anxious than ever. One did not question him, but he admitted that he hardly knew how he stood at present. It might be all right. Lardner, who with all his chaff had a very friendly feeling for Sharman, began to be afraid that things were going badly with him.

One afternoon, as Ventnor, Lardner, and Barstow stood on the platform at Waterloo and chatted as they waited for their train, Sharman came up to them. He was very white and his manner was nervous.

“Hullo!” said Lardner. “You look pretty seedy.”

“How are things going on the Stock Exchange?” Ventnor asked, with a genial smile.

“Oh! don’t ask me. I wish I’d never seen the place! I wish to goodness I were you!”

“What? You want to be a humdrum solicitor? It would bore you to death, after the excitement of your present life.”

“Yes, a solicitor, or a shoeblack—anybody who has his fate more or less in his own hands, and at any rate does not get punished for other men’s sins. I’m hanged if I shall be able to stand this racket much longer!”

Mr. Barstow, who believed in the exercise of tact, observed that the afternoon was almost unpleasantly warm.

“Cheer up!” said Ventnor jovially. “One of these days I’ll give you eight hours in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Very, very dry. You’d never stand it. All right for old-fashioned fogies like myself, but not enough excitement in it for Mr. Sharman.”

“Ah! you can afford to treat everything as a joke.”

“Here’s our train,” said Barstow, and the four men entered their carriage. Sharman flung himself back on the cushions with his eyes half closed; he looked absolutely worn out. Ventnor, sitting opposite, seemed as fresh and bright as when he started out in the morning. He was stripping the cover from a new pack of cards. They generally played a rubber of whist on the return journey.

Sharman sat up again to play his hand. Generally good, this afternoon he played execrably. He missed the call; he forgot the cards played; he made every possible mistake, Barstow, his partner, was furious.

“I’m very sorry,” said Sharman, “but I can’t help it. I simply can’t get my mind on to the game. I don’t believe I’ve got any mind left.”

“We’d better give it up,” said Lardner. “Sharman’s not up to it. We can finish the rubber tomorrow.”

“I should be awfully obliged if you would,” said Sharman.

So the game was abandoned. In a few moments Sharman was asleep. Barstow read the paper; Ventnor and Lardner amused themselves with écarté.

At their destination, when they had got out of the carriage, Lardner caught Ventnor by the arm. “Let those two go on. I want a word or two with you.”

“Certainly. What is it?”

“It’s my private opinion that poor little Sharman’s bust.”

“You don’t say so?”

“I do. Either absolutely ruined, or at any rate very hard hit. I’ve never known him to be like that before, and I know what an awful stew he has been in over this account. Bigger men than he have gone under, you know.”

“Yes, I know that. But Sharman does not behave like a ruined man. He’s had a trying time, but he’s all right.”

“Then how does a ruined man behave?”

“That depends on the strength of the man. But if Sharman were ruined, he would not get into the same carriage with us; he would keep out of the way. If he did get in with us, he would not even attempt to play whist, and, above all, he would not be able to go to sleep.”

“I admit that those are all strong points. But it’s quite simple. I shall look Sharman up tonight after dinner—nominally, to smoke a cigar with him, as I sometimes do; really, to find out how the land lies. If, after all, I happen to be right, and he only wants some temporary help to pull through, will you join me on even terms in finding it for him? You’re a far richer man than I am, and whatever I do in the matter you can much better afford to do. Sharman’s not a bad little chap, and we’ve known him a long time. He’s a white man and he won’t put us wrong. The trouble will be to get him to let us see him through.”

“Certainly I’ll join you. But I don’t attach much value to this piece of generosity, because there will be no necessity for it. I repeat what I said before—Sharman’s all right. And I’m glad of it. He’s a bit too ready to jabber about his private affairs, but he’s a good chap at heart. He does not need your help or mine.”

“I hope you’re right. In any case, many thanks.” And Lardner climbed into his dog-cart and drove off.

He went round to see Sharman in the evening, and found him much the better for his dinner and a rest. Of his own accord he began to talk about business, and Lardner soon found that his fears were groundless. On this occasion Sharman’s nervousness and his disposition to make the worst of everything had stood him in good stead. So far as business went, he had done, he admitted, fairly well. But you could pay too much for money. The strain, the anxiety, the overwork were killing him. Luckily it was not always like that; if it were, he would have to give it up altogether. And Lardner, greatly relieved, began to talk golf.

But one of the four men who had travelled down together was ruined, though that one was not Sharman. And that rubber of whist, which after the first game had been adjourned to the following day, was never to be played out.

•   •   •

After Lardner had left him, Mr. Graham Ventnor stood for a moment undecided. Then he sent away the carriage which was waiting for him. On a fine afternoon he sometimes preferred to walk back and to take a stroll on the Common before dinner.

As he walked up the High Street he noted the familiar scene with a new interest. The shops were busy, and Ventnor found himself observing that prices were cheaper in London—as if he had never observed it before. He noticed keenly the expression on the faces of men and boys who touched their hats to him. What did they think of him? What did they say as soon as they had gone past? The group of pretty women in bright dresses standing at the corner—the motor-car that passed him, working hard and going fast—the absurd dummy in boating things in the window of the cheap tailor—the bills fluttering at the office of the local newspaper—everyone and everything, however commonplace and trivial, had for him a freshness and a mystery. He was—and he knew it—seeing it all for the last time. Yet he kept his head erect and maintained his look of genial good humour; a prosperous man, with nothing on his mind, that is what he seemed.

There were no more shops to look at now; at its upper end the street reformed, widened and became residential. The long wall of old red bricks, pleasant in colour, with the pollarded elms showing above it at regular intervals—that was Barstow’s place. A very good fellow, Barstow, but it was a pity that he had no sense of humour. Then came the Recreation Ground; over the gate was the carved inscription that proclaimed that it was the gift of Graham Ventnor, Esq. “Thanks to the wise and splendid munificence of Mr. Ventnor”—that was how the article in the local paper had begun. Would they alter that inscription now?’ And what would the paper say? The turning to the right would have been the short way to the Common, but it would have taken Ventnor past his own house. Inside the house were his wife and daughters, all fond of him and proud of him. He could not go that way; the shame of the bold cowardice that he had in his mind stopped him. He had already written and posted in London the letter that was to say good-bye to them; they would believe the story that it told them—for a while, at any rate. He hurried on and took another turning further up.

There were groups of children playing on the outer fringe of the Common, under the row of young lime trees. On the seats were young men and maidens, awkward and constrained lovers—the women wearing a look of pleased discomfort. A little girl, chased by her companions, rushed past him, stumbled, fell, and howled. Kind Mr. Ventnor picked her up and comforted her with the coppers from his ticket-pocket. As he walked on he heard: “’Lizabeth! Come! Quick! A gentleman’s give our Gladys threepence.” He found an empty seat and sat down to rest. He had still more than a mile to go.

Yes, it was ruin; not the ruin from misfortune that brings one the unbearable pity of friends, but the ruin that comes of folly and crime. The first step thither had been taken ten years before. It was the year of his “wise and splendid munificence”; it was also the year of Pallet’s bankruptcy. He had discussed that bankruptcy with Sharman, and had said, “I cannot conceive what happiness a man can get from living beyond his income. It’s simply stupid, you know. It can only end one way.” He remembered the words exactly; at the time when he said them he himself was living far beyond his income, and was making good the deficiency by “borrowing” the money entrusted to him by clients for investment. His had not been the folly of ignorance or inability; he knew perfectly well what he was doing. He was a man that could not go back. He had slowly got into the first place in his town; he was the man of importance, the man to whom every new scheme was to be submitted, the man whose support meant everything. Retrenchment would have been a sign of failure—an admission that the king could do wrong. So he went on, doing infamous things that he might secure respect, doing reckless and rotten things that he might be thought wise and stable. He was less a fool than a madman; and he was a madman of some considerable cunning, since for ten years the soundness of his position had never been doubted, and his malpractices had never incurred the least suspicion. Another solicitor who had stolen his clients’ money was found out, struck off, and heavily sentenced. Lardner had happened to remark on the sentence at the time; he thought it excessive. “Not a bit of it,” said Graham Ventnor, in a burst of perfectly genuine indignation. “I’m only sorry that the man can’t be hanged. Where great trust is shown, as between solicitor and client, I would have the penalty for its abuse proportionately severe.” He recalled those words now. They had not been hypocritical; they had expressed his sincere conviction. At one period during those ten years a series of judicious speculations enabled him to put back the money that he had taken. But his speculations were not always successful, and his expenses went on increasing. He was soon on the downward path again. It was about this time that, thanks to his liberality and energy, the finances of the Cottage Hospital were put into a satisfactory condition.

One may play that game cleverly and prolong it wonderfully, but the end comes, and it is checkmate. Ventnor had foreseen that, and had never had the least doubt what he would do when the end came. He knew the look on an inferior’s face when his superior falls—that curious, disrespectful smile. He knew the kind of thing that was said. “Poor old Ventnor! I always said he was going a bit too fast. Sorry for his wife and children, though.” And Ventnor had not the least intention of stopping to see and hear that kind of thing.

The end had come rapidly. On the verge of discovery Ventnor had tried to save himself by speculation. And he had been caught in the slump. There had been a bitter irony in the situation when Lardner had appealed to him, without a doubt of his ability, to save poor Sharman from ruin. Nothing would have pleased Ventnor better, if Sharman had required the assistance and he had been in a position to give it. He was not quite a common thief; all he had valued in money was the power that it gave him to command the respect of his fellows and to do good. Well, it was all over now.

It was time for him to go. He had sat there longer than he had intended, making his useless survey of the past. The children had gone home already. The sun was setting; the air was still, hot, and heavy. He rose from his seat and took his way across the Common. Suddenly he heard behind him the sound of barking, and looked round. It was his favourite dog, a beautiful collie, the winner of many prizes. Mr. Ventnor’s horses, and dogs, and begonias always won prizes.

“What are you doing here, Pete? Who let you out? Managed that yourself, did you? Well, you’re not coming. No, Pete. Home! Get home!”

The dog understood and was generally obedient. But this time he went a little way, stopped, and again tried to follow his master. Ventnor had to throw stones at him to get him finally to obey.

In another twenty minutes he had reached the place where a little footpath leaves the main track across the Common, and passes through a wood lying low in a hollow. Ventnor took the footpath. On the edge of the wood he paused and looked round. Not a soul was in sight; not a sound was to be heard. He took the revolver—a new one—from his pocket and began methodically to slip in the cartridges. He gave a sigh of relief—relief that he had managed to keep it up to the end. Not by a word or a look had he given away his secret. Pity and contempt would come, but he would never have to know them. The house of cards would fall, but it would have lasted his lifetime.

He walked slowly and with a firm step into the dark of the wood. For nearly ten minutes there was silence. Then a shot rang out clear, and a flight of birds rose from the wood and flew rapidly away.

•   •   •

On Sunday morning Lardner and Sharman went for a walk together across the Common. Naturally they spoke of the one subject with which the suburb was ringing—the disappearance of its great man.

“Well,” said Sharman, “we saw him that afternoon. He was sane and normal then, if ever a man was. He was in no trouble of any kind. He was on the best of terms with his wife and children. It seems absurd to suppose that he was in any financial mess.”

“Quite absurd,” said Lardner. “We know the kind of man he was. He hated speculation and extravagance; he was one’s ideal of a safe, solid, prosperous solicitor. No, the thing’s inexplicable—unless he’s met with some accident.”

“And even then we should have heard of it by now.”

They turned down the footpath into the wood, still discussing the mystery. Presently Sharman pointed to a recumbent figure, half hidden in the bracken, some few yards away from them. “That beggar’s taking it pretty easy,” he said.

“Yes. I wonder what that thing is shining there by his hand.”

“Go and see.”

Lardner went forward. He recognised the man with the revolver by his side. Then he motioned to Sharman to stand back.

“Don’t come!” he called. “It’s too awful to look at!”

“What do you mean? What?”

“Ventnor! It’s his body! He has killed himself!”

THE FYLMIRE DIAMOND

Sir George and Lady Fylmire were just finishing breakfast and a discussion in a small room on the ground floor at Fylmire Place.

“It’s got to go,” said Sir George doggedly. He was a tired man of about thirty-three.

“It shan’t, then,” said her Ladyship. “I can’t think how we come to be in a hole like this. How is it?”

“Don’t know. Happens so. The farms don’t let, or let for half nothing. We spend twice as much as the governor did, and we get half as much. Something of the kind. Why bother? We’ve got to make something to be going on with.”

Lady Fylmire was young, beautiful, distinctly common, impatient, and impetuous. She tapped the table with her manicured nails. “What I want to know is, Whose fault is it?”

“Nobody’s. No good worrying about faults. Of course, you throw it about a bit, and then I’ve been unlucky racin’. What’s it matter? Two years ago it was the Romney. This year it’s got to be the Fylmire diamond.”

“No. You must sell another picture. And it’s hateful of you to put it all on to me.”

“Never put anything on anybody. It’s no good making a fuss, Agnes. I can’t sell another picture. There was too much talk in the papers last time—these confounded people won’t mind their own business. The stone was valued for probate at fifteen thousand. Then we can each take some, and we can get on; and nobody will know, and nobody will talk. You must be sensible.”

Lady Fylmire stamped her foot. “Don’t go on talking like that. I tell you I won’t have the thing sold. I’ve worn it everywhere, and I won’t wear an imitation.”

Sir George rose and paced the room with his hands in his pockets. “Yes,” he said, “it’s true enough that you’ve worn it everywhere. We can’t have twenty people to dinner but you must have that great yellow pebble flaring in your hair. It ought to be at the bank—that’s where it was always kept in the governor’s time. That little safe in your room wouldn’t stop a burglar long. Besides, you might lose it. I don’t trust that ingenious removable setting. You know how careless you are, Agnes.”

“Perhaps not quite as careless as you think.”

“You wouldn’t know the difference between the real stone and the imitation. They do these things awfully cleverly nowadays. Why, an expert can’t tell without taking them into his back shop and testing them with a lot of acids and so on.” This, by the way, is not a strictly accurate description of the methods employed for identifying precious stones.

“Is that what they did when they valued it?”

“Well, no. I don’t know that they did anything. I suppose they took my word for it. It wasn’t in dispute at all. It was the real stone.”

“Well, I don’t care. I like the feeling that I am wearing fifteen thousand in my hair, and I won’t have the stone sold. You know I always have my own way when I’ve really made up my mind to a thing.”

“Yes, you do when you can. This time you can’t, I’m sorry to have to point it out, but the diamond does not happen to be yours.”

Her Ladyship then observed that he was a brute and left the room. He yawned, lit a cigarette, and took up the Morning Post.

A month or two later Lady Fylmire allowed herself more amenable to argument. She brought her husband a little account from her dressmaker (£453 17s. 9d.). She also kissed him on the brow and said he must do as he liked about the Fylmire diamond.

•   •   •

Mr. John Duffen Reeves was a dealer and expert in precious stones. He spoke Dutch fluently, and had an enlarged thumb, from which you might have deduced correctly, as he would have admitted, that at one time he had worked as a diamond polisher in Amsterdam. He had lived with precious stones all his life, and had the knowledge of them that is not to be got from books, but only from incessant handling and observation. He was forty-five years of age and looked younger. He was a good-looking man of slightly foreign appearance, and had a quiet but authoritative manner. He was wealthy enough to have given up his business if it had not happened that his business interested him. In the practice of it his knowledge of human nature had increased and his belief in it had lessened. That was, perhaps, inevitable. He was reasonably honest, without any quixotic reluctance to make a good profit when he saw the chance. His discretion, as it had need to be, was remarkable and undoubted.

He had had dealings on several occasions both with Sir George and with his father, and a visit from the younger baronet came as no surprise to him. He received Sir George in his private office. After a little preliminary conversation Sir George said, “You know, it was on a business matter that I wanted to see you.”

Mr. Reeves said that he was charmed. Was he to have the pleasure of selling Sir George another rope of pearls?

“Well, no,” said Sir George. “What I mean to say is the boot’s rather on the other leg. I don’t want to buy—I want to sell. This is all in confidence, you know.”

“Of course.”

“Well, you know the Fylmire diamond?”

Mr. Reeves did. He had had the privilege of seeing it several times. It was historical—a very fine yellow diamond. Surely Sir George did not mean to sell that?

“Don’t know exactly,” said Sir George. “You see, one reaches a point. One’s got to have some money to—er—go on with, and landowning’s no great catch. The question is, Could the stone be sold without giving the show away?”

“Without publicity? Certainly, Sir George. At any rate, for a time.”

“And, coming down to figures, about how much would it—er—fetch?”

“It was valued some years ago at fifteen thousand, I think. That struck me at the time as being rather under the mark. Of course, it is difficult to value these fancy stones. They are worth what you can get for them, and that varies with the state of the market.”

“What do you mean by fancy stones?”

“Something out of the run. Any coloured diamond would be a fancy stone. The Fylmire diamond is a honey yellow, so far as I remember, as remarkable for its quality as for its size. It is without flaw, bright and lively, and has been very well cut. Of course, if it had been a sapphire-blue or a true red it would have been worth more. But it is a good and important stone, and I should be very glad to make you an offer for it.”

“It could be copied, I suppose?”

“Quite easily and quite exactly. Well enough to take in anybody but an expert—and to take in the expert, too, if he only saw it by artificial light and not very near.”

“I’ve got it with me,” said Sir George, drawing a worn morocco case from his coat pocket. “I wish you’d have a look at it and give me a rough idea of what you would give for it. The setting unfastens, you know, so that you can take the stone out.”

Mr. Reeves opened the case and took out the stone. He turned it over in his hand and smiled. “Yes,” he said, “that’s very well made.”

“Made? How? What do you mean?”

“This is not the Fylmire diamond. It is not a diamond at all. It is a copy in strass.”

“You are joking, of course?”

“Certainly not, Sir George.”

“And you are quite certain?”

Mr. Reeves took the stone to the window and looked at it through a glass. “There can be no doubt about it. You supposed this to be the Fylmire diamond, then?”

“Certainly. I did not know that there was a copy of it in existence. How on earth—?” He stopped short, and then suddenly blurted out, “That’s Agnes!”

“I beg your pardon! But perhaps this is a subject it would be inconvenient to speak of further?”

“It’s a delicate matter, and a pretty serious one. But as I tried to sell you that fraud, an explanation is due to you.”

“I could not consent to hear it on those grounds. You require no defence.”

“Put it, then, on the grounds that I have a good deal of confidence in you and in your discretion; that I’m in a deuce of a hole and want your advice. My wife was very strongly opposed to the sale of the diamond. I pointed out to her that she could have the stone copied, and I’m afraid I rather exaggerated the way the imitation would take in an expert. It is possible, from something I said quite innocently, that she may have supposed that the stone would be bought on my assurance that it was the Fylmire diamond, without any very critical examination. She hates imitations, and likes to feel that she is wearing something really valuable. It is my conviction that she had the copy made and then tried to—well—er—”

“To play a little practical joke,” suggested Mr. Reeves. “And do you suppose that she has sold the diamond, or perhaps borrowed money on it?”

“No. For one thing, I know she’s got no money just now. Then she would not have parted with the diamond. That was her idea—she wanted the actual diamond. And when she has an idea, she is most remarkably—”

“Remarkably firm about it. I’m inclined to agree with you that the diamond has not been sold. I don’t think that it would have changed hands without my hearing something about it. Well, your course is clear enough.”

“Blest if I see it!”

“Say—treating the matter lightly, of course—that the practical joke has failed.”

“That would be all right if I knew that she had done this for certain. But suppose she didn’t? She was always careless about her jewels, and it is possible that the substitution of the sham for the real stone was made some time ago, not by her, and without her knowledge. In that case I should seem to be accusing her, and she would resent it—er—very considerably. If I were quite sure that the real stone was still in her possession, that would be a very different thing.”

“It is quite simple. You will take this imitation back to her, and give any reason but the right one for not having sold it. Then wait for some occasion on which she would naturally wear the Fylmire diamond. If the real stone is still in her possession, she will wear that and not the imitation. Of that I feel absolutely certain.”

“So do I,” said Sir George. “But you leave out one important point. I am not an expert. I should not know the difference between the sham and the real, even in the brightest light.”

“True,” said Mr. Reeves. “But I will show you how to tell the difference in the dark.”

•   •   •

“Have you sold it?” asked Lady Fylmire eagerly, at the first opportunity.

“Well, no,” said Sir George languidly. “I’ve had a pretty good week racin’, and they tell me there will be a better chance later on. I’ve left it over for a bit.”

“I’m so glad. That’s a weight off my mind. Now I shall be able to sleep.”

“Don’t know that it should take you like that, now that you’ve made up your mind to it. After all, it’s only putting off the evil day.”

Lady Fylmire recovered herself. “Yes, I know. But, you see, I was so anxious to wear it at the Sarrabuts’ dance next week.”

“That’s it. I see.” He was by no means sure that that was it, and he did not see. But he handed back to her the worn morocco case with the clever copy of the Fylmire diamond in it.

She opened the case, looked affectionately at the model, and kissed it devoutly. “I don’t know how I shall bear to part with you,” she said, with a sigh.

Sir George was more mystified than ever. He was fond of making a bet, but he would have been sorry at the moment to have been asked to stake any money on the question whether his wife did or did not know that the real stone had been replaced by a sham.

He settled the point easily enough on the night of Lady Sarrabut’s dance. His wife was wearing what purported to be the Fylmire diamond, and in the dark brougham it was quite easy for him, following the instructions of Mr. Reeves, to decide that it really was the diamond and not the imitation.

The instructions had been simple enough. Many diamonds, though not all, are phosphorescent. The quality is specially possessed by yellow diamonds; as a rule the smaller stones are the more luminous. For a considerable time after exposure to a bright light they continue to glow. Mr. Reeves had had opportunities of observing the Fylmire diamond, and he had noticed that it possessed this quality in an unusual degree. Sir George had already noted the appearance of the imitation in darkness and semi-darkness. This was quite different; a yellow fire seemed to be floating over his wife’s head. She sat upright in the brougham—her pretty hair had been exquisitely arranged—and he watched her intently. He said nothing—that was for the return journey. And he did not much like the idea of facing that return journey; he was quite certain there would be no end of a row. His partners must have found him very dull; he was never a brilliant man conversationally, and tonight he was very absent-minded. He was glad when his wife decided to return immediately after supper; he was anxious to go through with it and get it over.

She leant back in the carriage now, since she was tired, and the arrangement of her hair no longer mattered.

Sir George began in a husky, unnatural voice that he hardly recognised as his own. (He had used it once before, however, when he had been called upon unexpectedly to read the lessons in a village church.)

“Look here, Agnes,” he said, “I hate rows, and we have too much of them, anyhow, but there’s something that I’ve got to say.”

“I wonder what your excuse for a quarrel is tonight?” said Lady Fylmire querulously.

“I wish it was nothing more than an excuse. Here are the facts. When you handed me the diamond to sell, it was not the diamond, and you knew it was only an imitation. You are wearing the real stone tonight. Don’t dispute it—it’s true. And it’s pretty low down. I couldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen and known it for myself.” Then he waited for the outburst. None came.

“That is all quite true,” said Lady Fylmire. “How did you find it out?”

“The expert to whom I took it detected the imitation at once. Luckily, he has had dealings with me before—he had no doubt that I had offered it in the belief that it was the real stone. I knew you were wearing the real stone tonight, because the real stone declares itself in the dark. It is phosphorescent. Possibly you didn’t know that.”

He forebore to add that a week before he had not known it either.

“No,” she said, “I didn’t know it.”

“And have you got anything to say?”

“Yes, I’ve a good deal to say. I’ve been a fool, George, but I haven’t been quite as bad as you think.”

Her voice shook a little, and her husband noticed with surprise that she was not showing fight.

“I don’t say that I think badly of you, but I do think you—er—didn’t exactly realise what you were doing.”

“That’s true. I didn’t. Well, I’ll tell you the story. You remember nagging me about being careless with the diamond?”

“Yes, I said something about it.”

“Well, as it happened, Lady Sarrabut had talked to me about the same thing some time before. She had told me that I had much better keep the diamond at the bank, and have a copy made which I could wear. The copy was already ordered when you told me you meant to sell the diamond. Now, I didn’t want you to sell the diamond—I think I said so.”

“You did,” said Sir George drily.

“Then I got that bill from my dressmaker woman, and she wanted her money at once; so I changed my mind and decided to let you sell the diamond. I did mean then to give the real stone to you. It was just at the last moment that I was tempted. There were the two stones together, and it seemed almost impossible to tell which was which. You were just driving off to catch your train, and I had no time to think it over properly. It was all done in a second—the real stone taken out of the setting and the sham put in its place. Oh! what I’ve suffered! Your cart hadn’t got down to the gates before I’d repented. I thought of sending a groom after you, but I wanted to wear the diamond at this dance, and I was so distracted I didn’t know what to do. I went upstairs and cried—I don’t suppose you care, not now.”

The light of a street lamp flashed into the brougham and showed her Ladyship, very pretty in her distress.

“Look here, Agnes,” said her husband awkwardly. “That’s all right. I see how it was. You needn’t go on telling me and—er—working yourself up this way. As it happens, no harm’s done.”

“But I want to tell you. It wouldn’t be fair to myself not to tell you. I had an awful day. I went for a walk in the village, and the policeman stared at me, and though I know him, of course, and know what a fool he is, I was rather frightened. I felt as if he might perhaps know about it. And at last I quite made up my mind. If you had come back and told me that you had sold the diamond, I should have confessed everything at once. Don’t you remember how glad I was when you came back and said you’d put off selling the diamond for a bit? That was because I could undo my wicked action, and would be able to wear the Fylmire diamond at the Sarrabuts’ with a clear conscience, and wouldn’t have to confess. You do forgive me, George, dearest, don’t you?”

“Yes, that’s all right, now you’ve owned up.”

“It might have been penal servitude?”

“Don’t know, exactly. Sort of skating round the edge of it, I should think. I shouldn’t get playing about like that any more, Agnes, if I were you.”

Then Agnes completely broke down. She wept copiously, and between her sobs made sundry statements—as, for example, that she would never play about any more at all any way; that she wished the Fylmire diamond was at the bottom of the sea, and was prepared to throw it there herself; that perhaps if George had been kinder to her this would never have happened; and finally that she wished to give up the use of jewellery and other worldly trappings and, if possible, to enter a convent.

Her husband consoled her as best he could. Becoming gradually consoled, she said he would never know how deeply she loved him, and that she thought he had the finest and noblest character of any man in the world.

“Easy on, I say,” said Sir George, modestly and—as I think—correctly.

•   •   •

A few days later Sir George again called on Mr. Reeves. He had the same leather case in his pocket, but its contents were different. He produced it with a hesitating—

“I’ve—er—brought that diamond I was speaking about the other day.”

“Ah! yes,” said Mr. Reeves, as he opened the case. “A fine stone—a beautiful thing!” But he said no more; he never even hinted a question. Sir George had imagined that it might be necessary to administer a slight snub to Mr. Reeves, but there was no opportunity. Mr. Reeves had given his advice; he now held the Fylmire diamond in his hands. He was content with that.

But Sir George, imagining what ghastly suppositions Reeves’s discreet reticence might cover, felt the necessity of telling a plausible story.

“By the way, Mr. Reeves, you were all wrong last time.”

“When you brought the copy of the diamond? Surely not. I am convinced it was the copy and not the original stone.”

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean your suggestion that—er—Lady Fylmire was playing a practical joke on me.”

“This is too bad,” said Mr. Reeves. “That was your own idea, Sir George. I have decided opinions about diamonds, but I don’t know enough of the ways of great ladies to have the right to criticise them.”

“Well, somebody said something, and it was wrong. It was a mere mistake. Acting on my advice, Lady Fylmire had a copy of the diamond made. Not being an expert, she was unable to distinguish between the two. She gave me the copy, fully believing it to be the original.”

“Quite so. Perfectly natural. I think I remember saying at the time that the copy was particularly well made. Now, with regard to this stone, Sir George—do you think you could be tempted to part with it?”

Sir George thought he could. When he left, a few minutes later, he left the diamond behind him, and had Mr. Reeves’s cheque in his pocket. He was a little pleased with the tact with which he had managed everything.

And Mr. Reeves sat and smiled pleasantly. It was not entirely because he had bought the Fylmire diamond for £13,000 that morning, and would sell it to a wealthy American for £20,000 that afternoon—though that in itself was pleasant enough. His profession brought before him many curiosities of human nature—his memory was a museum of them. To this museum he had just added one more exhibit.

THE BITING
OF THE BITER

To have a proper appreciation of what is fair and friendly, to be ready to make a concession here in order to receive one there, to give on one occasion and take on another, is an excellent thing. This friendly feeling is particularly needful if you happen to be a picture-dealer; you will work harmoniously with other picture-dealers, and incidentally you will find it profitable.

For instance, it may happen that in an auction sale there is one picture which six dealers are anxious to buy. Is that any reason for jealousy and naughty tempers and wicked words, and high prices? It need not be. Possibly one of the six will be able to find reasons which will prevent the other five from bidding. Or, possibly, something of this kind may happen: The much-desired and valuable picture comes up. An air of apathy seems to settle on the little group of dealers. Bidding is slow and soon ceases. The picture is knocked down to one of the dealers for a fifth of its value. And, after the sale, that little group of dealers adjourn to a neighbouring house of entertainment, where they can have a room to themselves, and a cup of tea if they require it. There they hold a private auction among themselves, and this time the picture fetches its real value. The highest bidder takes the picture, and the very considerable difference between the two prices is divided among the other five. Thus the money is kept in the family, so to speak, and is not frittered away upon the original owner of that picture.

Again, it may happen that a dealer wishes to pay much more than he need for something. This is less astonishing than it sounds. If you pay a sensationally high price for a mezzotint at Christie’s, and secure your prize after what looks like a very keen struggle, you add to the prestige of the plate; and possibly you have four or five proofs from the same plate already waiting in your portfolio which you will be glad to dispose of to collectors at collectors’ prices, seeing that you bought them privately for very little. How can the collector object to a long price when he can read for himself in the papers what you had to pay for the same thing at Christie’s.

Yes, in spite of trade rivalries, a dealer should be on friendly terms with other dealers. If Mr. Samuel Levison and Mr. Algernon Franks had not been picture-dealers, they would have quarrelled, for each had taken an advantage of the other that the other considered to be unfair; as it was, they went into partnership. In business they were strictly honest—by which I mean that they did nothing illegal and nothing generous.

There was, for instance, one picture which went through their hands three times. It was a pastoral landscape, and had many merits; but it had no history, and unhappy is the picture that has no history. “I know it to be a Watteau,” said Mr. Levison firmly, “and a remarkably fine Watteau, too. No expert who has seen it has had any doubt about it. By the custom of the trade, I am prevented from giving a guarantee, as the picture has no definite history. But the painting is its own guarantee. Nobody who knows the work of Watteau could possibly doubt it.” Mr. Levison sold the picture. On the death of the purchaser, a few months afterwards, his collection was dispersed, and the firm bought the picture back again for a song. Mr. Franks knew of a client who wanted an example of Pater. Mr. Franks said he had always considered the picture to be an undoubted Pater, and therefore he had no compunctions at selling it as such—without any formal warranty, as the poor thing had no history. Soon afterwards that client’s creditors were rude enough to sell him up; the reputed Pater did not fetch much, and Messrs. Levison and Franks bought it once more. Several points might be urged in excuse for their subsequent sale of it as a Fragonard. Experts may change their minds. Also, they did not actually guarantee it to be a Fragonard. They were strictly honest, with a slight tendency, if they swerved at all, not to swerve on the quixotic side.

One fine morning Levison walked into his partner’s room. Mr. Levison was a portly gentleman, with grey hair and whiskers. It was said that as a young man he had been handsome. Franks had never been handsome; he was small and bald, and looked rather like some obscene bird. He might have been a vulture in a previous incarnation.

“I shall be going away after lunch today,” said Mr. Levison.

“That is all right. What is, it?”

“I had a letter from a friend of mine who is an auctioneer, in a small way of business, at Salden, in Surrey. He is selling the furniture of a little house there—belonged to an old lady who has just died—and he wanted a word of advice from me.”

“Advice about what?”

“Well, there are two small pictures, but I can see from what he says they are nothing. I would not go down if he were not a friend. And there is a Turkey carpet—”

“Yes. What about the pictures? What does he think?”

“What do you suppose? Of course, he thinks they are good; he does not know anything.”

“All right. If you buy a picture, that is on the firm’s account.”

“Of course. You need not remind me of that. When have you found me trying to deal for myself?”

“Never. But perhaps I have had my doubts.”

“And perhaps I have had mine. Come, Franks, we don’t want to begin to quarrel. If this should be a Romney—”

“Romney? Why didn’t you say that before?”

“Romney, or Sir Joshua, or something or other. I don’t remember what the idiot said. I told you he doesn’t know anything. Why be so quarrelsome?”

“Me? I was not quarrelsome. I like to look after myself a little, that’s all. I’m quite friendly. I tell you what—I’ll go down to Salden with you this afternoon, if you like.”

“No, that’s not necessary. It’s chiefly the Turkey carpet, and seeing an old friend. If I do anything about the pictures, I shall tell you; the things are on view tomorrow, and you could go down then.”

By three o’clock Levison was at the house at Salden where the sale was to take place. His friend Powlet, the auctioneer, was to meet him there.

“Well, my friend,” said Levison, “what is it all about?”

“Well, you got my letter and the catalogue?”

“Oh, yes. Valuable oil painting—portrait of a lady—believed to be by Romney. I have heard that kind of thing before. If there had been any chance that was a Romney, you would have come to me before—and perhaps to twenty other dealers as well.”

“I’ll tell you the truth. I didn’t believe it to be a Romney. The old lady hadn’t much money, and she didn’t go in for pictures. She never spoke of it as a Romney, so far as I can find out—or as anything else. Her nephews, whom I’m selling for, don’t believe it, either. In fact, one of them said to me that if I could get a fiver for it, he shouldn’t grumble. But when I came to get it down yesterday, I changed my mind; I said to myself that there was quality there. I don’t care what it is—whether I understand it or whether I don’t—if a thing is really good, I’m on to it. I was mad then that I had not had an expert down before. I did suggest it, but the nephews were against it. When I looked at that picture, I couldn’t help feeling—”

“Well, come to business. Let me put my eye on it.”

“Right. Jim, just fetch down the smaller of those two pictures, will you?”

The man in a green apron, who was arranging the lots, brought the picture and set it up on a sideboard facing the window.

“Ah!” said Mr. Levison.

“What do you make of it?” asked the auctioneer eagerly.

Mr. Levison did not answer that question. “There was another picture, as well.”

“Yes. Bring down the other one, Jim. What do you think about it, Levison? Could it be a Romney?”

Mr. Levison appeared to be lost in thought. Powlet felt annoyed. “Do come on,” he said.

“I was trying to think where I saw the original of that.”

“What? It’s only a copy?”

“It’s not badly painted, but there’s nothing masterly about it. Look at those dirty shadows and the clumsy way the drapery’s handled. I’ve seen the original somewhere, and I shall remember it yet. If you want my opinion, it’s a copy of an Opie, and as it’s a pretty subject it might fetch a tenner, or a little more if anybody wanted it. Let’s look at the other.”

He examined the other with cordial approval. “That’s better,” he said. “I can’t say what it is—nobody very first class. But the man who painted it knew what he was doing; there’s nothing weak about it.”

“Are you going to bid for either of them?”

“I’m afraid not. They aren’t quite up to our class. I might, perhaps, have bought the landscape, if I had seen my way to a customer for it; but the people who buy pictures don’t want a painting—they want names. Here, let’s wash the dust out of our throats.”

“I was just going to suggest it,” said Powlet. “The station refreshment-room’s the nearest thing.”

A few yards away from the house Levison stopped. “I must run back,” he said. “I’ve left my gloves. You go on. I shall be there in a minute.”

He went straight back to the room where the pictures were, and was pleased to find that Jim was not there. He went straight to the “copy of an Opie” and examined it with extreme care for some few minutes. “Not a doubt about it,” he said to himself; “not a shadow of a doubt. Another of the Lady Hamiltons.”

Then he drew his gloves from his coat-tail pocket, and rejoined Powlet in the station refreshment-room. Powlet grumbled a little. “You’ve been long enough.”

“Well, I couldn’t find the blessed things. Don’t you grumble. If anyone’s going to do that, it ought to be me. You write me long yarns about a fine Romney, and when I come down to look at the thing—well, never mind. Mine’s Scotch. What’s yours?”

Powlet began to talk about the old lady. She had lived in that house for forty-nine years. It was a pity, he thought, that she could not complete her fifty. He supposed it was not to be. Now and again her nephews came to see her. But for that she lived pretty well alone. At the age of sixty she wanted to go as a missionary; her nephews didn’t care—it was the parson dissuaded her. Well connected, so everybody said, but eccentric. Sometimes Levison appeared to listen; more often he seemed abstracted. He had a good deal to think about, and Powlet accused him of not being cheerful company. He had quite determined by this time to buy the picture by himself for himself, to sell it again as soon as he had got the history of it—which he thought would not be very much trouble—and to do all this without the knowledge of his partner Franks.

Levison’s conscience did not disturb him. Knowledge has a money value in business. The bibliophile who discovers a treasure in the “twopenny box” does not tell the vendor; he pays his twopence and takes his treasure home. Mr. Levison had discovered one of the many Lady Hamiltons that Romney painted; he was not bound to tell Powlet that; and as he did not tell Powlet that, he had to tell him something else. With regard to his treatment of his partner, he felt that his moral position was impregnable. He had discovered the picture, and it was fair that he should have the entire profits from the discovery; besides, he was absolutely sure that with a similar opportunity Franks would have taken the same advantage of it. If he ever did swerve from the paths of the strictest honesty, it was never on the quixotic side; but if any purist had told him that he was a liar and a swindler, he would have been genuinely surprised.

“Well,” said Mr. Franks rather sharply, next morning, “do we buy the Romney?”

“What Romney? Oh, yes—that thing down at Salden. Absolutely N. G. What did I tell you? You can go and buy it yourself, if you like—on your own account.”

It was a mistake, and his partner was down on him in a flash. “Will you put that in writing?”

Levison made another mistake. He did not put it in writing. If he had done so, Franks would have been reassured, and would never have thought about the picture again. “Don’t be a fool!” he said. “I’m not going to draw up documents about that blessed fire-screen. Oh! go and look at it yourself. It’s on view today.” The last sentences were good, and nearly took in Mr. Franks. But the first sentences had already aroused his suspicions.

“I have bought fire-screens before now and made money. It was a big picture?”

“Thirty twenty-five. Portrait of a woman. Head and shoulders. Rather a pretty subject; looks like a copy of a fairly decent thing. No great catch, though, even if you take it at that.”

“You seem anxious to run it down. Why do you not say it is rot, and leave it, as you generally do?”

“So I did, until you began asking questions.” This was one more mistake. He should not have taken the trouble to defend himself, and would not have done if the picture had really been rubbish.

“Very well, I say no more,” said Franks, and walked out of the room. When he was alone he sat for some minutes in a brown study. The more he thought, the more he became convinced that he was being done. Mr. Algernon Franks did not like to be done. He had almost made up his mind to run down to Salden, when, as he went out to the outer office, he encountered Mr. Jewit coming out of his partner’s room.

So far as he knew, there was no reason connected with the firm why his partner should consent to see Mr. Jewit. Mr. Jewit was quite impecunious, quite straight, and hopelessly alcoholic. Suddenly an idea occurred to Mr. Franks, and he gave up all notion of going down to Salden. He could manage it with much less trouble to himself.

On the following evening, after Levison had left, Franks sent for a clerk who frequently attended sales for them. “Look here, Peters,” he said. “I want you to run down to Salden tomorrow. There’s a small sale there. You know Mr. Jewit by sight? That’s all right. You’re to keep an eye on him, but don’t get talking with him. If he bids for any picture, follow him and beat him.”

“Up to?”

“No limit. Beat Jewit. If he’s not there, do nothing, and come home as soon as you can.”

“Very well, sir.”

Jewit was at the sale, and he followed his instructions precisely. He was to buy the Romney. It was probable, he was told, that he would get it for a few pounds. But if by any chance some idea of its value had leaked out, and there were severe competition, he was to stop at £2,500.

No picture-dealers had thought the sale worth their attention. One or two furniture-dealers who had come down had taken rather a fancy to the Romney. “It’s a pretty thing, whatever it may be,” said one of them. “I’d risk giving twenty pounds for it, as a spec.” It was the general opinion that he ought to get it for less.

Mr. Jewit, who was cold sober for the occasion, opened the ball with a modest bid of one pound. The furniture-dealer went to thirty shillings, and was ironically requested by his companions to be careful. He and Mr. Jewit took it up to twenty pounds, and there the dealer came out, and the clerk that Franks had instructed came in. Presently the two men were raising one another by hundreds; the auctioneer was avoiding anything like a look of surprise, and the room was watching the duel with eager interest. At two thousand, Jewit, in accordance with his instructions, went straight to two thousand five hundred. He stood there, looking determined and truculent, as if he were ready to go on betting all day on that scale.

“Six,” said the clerk. “Two thousand six hundred,” said the auctioneer. “Good evening,” said Jewit. It was all over. Jewit walked out, and the men who questioned him did not get much information for their trouble. In the street Jewit hesitated for a minute; he was very thirsty. Then he decided to put business before pleasure, and made his way to the telegraph-office.

The clerk arrived at the same office a minute or so later, just in time to hear Jewit say to the girl behind the counter, “It’s Levison, care of Gasless, London. Ain’t my writing plain enough?”

“And this,” the clerk observed to himself, “is pretty hot.” Then he sent off his own wire to Franks, also care of Gasless, London. After all, it was none of his business. So far as he could see, the firm had been bidding against itself. There might be a reason for that, or it might be a blunder; anyhow, it was not his blunder. He was quite sure that he had carried out the orders that Mr. Franks had given him exactly.

In Mr. Franks’s room the two partners sat and talked. They had just returned from a big sale, where they had done pretty well. Mr. Levison was in a good temper, and drank his whisky-and-soda with the beautiful feeling that he had earned it. Even Franks was distinctly less acrimonious than usual. There was a tap at the door, and a boy brought in the two telegrams. “Here is a funny thing,” said Franks. “Two private telegrams, one for each of us, and both come at the same moment.”

“Don’t see much ‘funny’ in that,” said Levison, as he tore open the envelope. He read the telegram and began to swear. He seldom swore, and possessed no fluency. He merely repeated the same word over and over again.

Franks looked up from his own telegram which he had been reading with a smile of perfect content. “Was there anything the matter, Levison?” he said.

“Oh, no!” said Levison, with savage sarcasm. “If a man curses, that is because everything is all right. Got any more fool questions to ask?”

“Dear me!” said Franks. “And that is the man who only the other day accused me of being quarrelsome! What a queer thing! Well, my friend, perhaps I may ask you what it is that is troubling you?”

“And perhaps you may do nothing of the kind. When those telegrams were brought in, you observed that they were private telegrams. Kindly remember that.”

“But I was wrong. This telegram here was addressed to me personally, but it is on the firm’s business all the same. I have bought a picture.”

“What is it?”

“Well, I don’t know exactly what it is. I have never seen it. I hope it will be all right. I’ve paid getting on for three thousand for it.”

“Have you gone stark, staring mad, Franks?”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

“Because you can’t do that, and you know you can’t do it. You can’t buy like that without consulting me. I’ll repudiate the thing altogether. No, you must be mad! Three thousand, or something near it, for a picture you’ve never seen, when you don’t even know what it is. You ought to be locked up.”

“A man who is a good judge thought very well of it,” said Franks, as if in feeble self-defence. “And I had hoped to get it much cheaper. It may come all right one day. It may turn out very good. I should have consulted you, perhaps.”

Mr. Levison was beside himself with rage. “You know very well what the terms of our partnership are; and you’ll have to abide by them. I’ll have nothing whatever to do with the transaction. You’ve bought this picture at an absurd price without consulting me—you may pay for it yourself.”

“I have been a little irregular; but still, partners should stick together. One day you may make a mistake yourself.”

“It’s not a bit of use your whining. My mind’s made up.”

“That may mean a heavy loss for me,” said Franks gloomily. “But if you will not share it with me, neither shall you share the profit, if there ever is any. No. You throw me over? Very well—then I will have that in writing.” He scribbled a few lines on a sheet of paper and handed it to Levison.

Levison read it, gave a contemptuous snort, signed it, and tossed it back to Franks.

“And let that be a lesson to you not to try monkeying about with me.”

Suddenly Franks’s eyes blazed. He rose and struck the table with his fist. “No,” he said. “It is you who will have the lesson. Here is another coincidence about those telegrams. Both came from Salden—yours told you that Jewit had been outbid—mine told me that I had bought the picture for the firm at £2,600. Now I keep it for myself.”

“What are you jabbering about? I know nothing about Jewit, and my telegram’s not from Salden.”

“Very well. Show me the top of the telegram. If it is not from Salden, I will pay you a hundred pounds and apologise.”

Levison swore. It was not a very effective retort. He also tore up the telegram.

“You give yourself away, you see. When you went to Salden, you left a catalogue on your desk. I looked at that. I read ‘believed to be by Romney.’ I did not like your manner. I felt almost certain, when I saw Jewit coming out of your room—that drunken beggar whom you employed when you were on your own—a man that you said you’d never have in the office again—you meant to get that Romney for yourself. I sent Peters to buy for the firm, to beat Jewit, and not to bid at all unless Jewit did. You tried to do me; now you have done yourself, you swine!”

Levison was equally angry. “Be careful what you are saying. Repeat that and I’ll half kill you. You’ve made a fool of yourself. It is true I sent Jewit to buy, but not for myself; it was for the firm, and intended as a surprise for you. And the picture could have been bought for a tenner if you hadn’t interfered.”

“Look out of the window,” said Franks. “On that roof you see a common black cat.”

“What about it?”

“Well, you may go and tell that story to that cat. To me it is no good.”