Rostocker was the older and stronger man, and when at last he spoke it was with the decision of one in authority.
"It is your game," he said, with grave imperturbability.
"Eight thousand five hundred at twenty-five. Will you deliver at the Credit Lyonnais in half an hour?"Thorpe nodded, impassively. Then a roving idea of genial impertinence brought a gleam to his eye. "If you should happen to want more Rubber Consols at any time," he said, with a tentative chuckle, "I could probably let you have them at a reduced price."The two received the pleasantry without a smile, but to Thorpe's astonishment one of them seemed to discern something in it beside banter. It was Rostocker who said:
"Perhaps we may make a deal with you," and apparently meant it.
They went out at this, ignoring ceremony upon their exit as stolidly as they had done upon their entrance, and a moment later Thorpe called in the Secretary, and despatched a messenger to bring Semple from Capel Court.
The formalities of this final transfer of shares had been dictated to the former, and he had gone off on the business, before the Broker arrived.
Thorpe stood waiting near the door, and held out his hand with a dramatically significant gesture when the little Scotchman entered. "Put her there!" he exclaimed heartily, with an exuberant reversion to the slang of remote transatlantic bonhomie.
"Yeh've done it, then!" said Semple, his sharp face softening with pleasure at the news. "Yeh've pulled it off at twenty-three!"The other's big countenance yielded itself to a boyish grin.
"Twenty-FIVE!" he said, and laughed aloud. "After you left this morning, it kind o' occurred to me that I'd raise it a couple of pounds. I found I was madder about those pieces in the newspapers than I thought I was, and so I took an extra seventeen thousand pounds on that account.""God above!" Semple ejaculated, with a satisfaction through which signs of an earlier fright were visible.
"It was touch-and-go if you didn't lose it all by doing that! You risked everything, man!"Thorpe ponderously shrugged his shoulders.
"Well--I did it, anyhow, and it came off," was his comment.
Then, straightening himself, he drew a long, long breath, and beamed down at the little man. "Think of it! God! It's actually all over! And NOW perhaps we won't have a drink!
Hell! Let's send out for some champagne!" His finger was hovering over the bell, when the Broker's dissuading voice arrested it. "No, no!" Semple urged. "I wouldn't touch it.
It's no fit drink for the daytime--and it's a scandal in an office. Your clerks will aye blab it about hither and yon, and nothing harms a man's reputation more in the City.""Oh, to hell with the City!" cried Thorpe, joyously.
"I'm never going to set foot in it again. Think of that!
I mean it!"
None the less, he abandoned the idea of sending out for wine, and contented himself with the resources of the cabinet instead.
After some friendly pressure, Semple consented to join him in a brandy-and-soda, though he continued to protest between sips that at such an hour it was an indecent practice.
"It's the ruin of many a strong man," he moralized, looking rather pointedly at Thorpe over his glass. "It's the principal danger that besets the verra successful man.
He's too busily occupied to take exercise, and he's too anxious and worried to get his proper sleep--but he can always drink! In one sense, I'm not sorry to think that you're leaving the City.""Oh, it never hurts me," Thorpe said, indifferently accepting the direction of the homily. "I'm as strong as an ox.
But all the same, I shall be better in every way for getting out of this hole. Thank God, I can get off to Scotland tomorrow. But I say, Semple, what's the matter with your visiting me at my place there? I'll give you the greatest shooting and fishing you ever heard of."The Broker was thinking of something else. "What is to be the precise position of the Company, in the immediate future?"he asked.
"Company? What Company?"
Semple smiled grimly. "Have you already forgotten that there is such a thing?" he queried, with irony.
"Why, man, this Company that paid for this verra fine Board-table," he explained, with his knuckles on its red baize centre.
Thorpe laughed amusedly. "I paid for that out of my own pocket," he said. "For that matter everything about the Company has come out of my pocket----""Or gone into it," suggested the other, and they chuckled together.
"But no--you're right," Thorpe declared. "Some thing ought to be settled about the Company, I suppose.
Of course I wash my hands of it--but would anybody else want to go on with it? You see its annual working expenses, merely for the office and the Board, foot up nearly 3,000 pounds. I've paid these for this year, but naturally I won't do it again. And would it be worth anybody else's while to do it? Yours, for example?""Have you had any explanations with the other Directors?"the Broker asked, thoughtfully.
"Explanations--no," Thorpe told him. "But that's all right.
The Marquis has been taken care of, and so has Plowden.
They're game to agree to anything. And let's see--Kervick is entirely my man. That leaves Watkin and Davidson--and they don't matter. They're mere guinea-pigs. A few hundreds apiece would shut them up, if you thought it was worth while to give them anything at all.""And about the property,--the rubber plantation,--that the Company was formed to acquire and develop. I suppose there really is such a plantation?""Oh, yes, it's all there right enough," Thorpe said, briefly.
"It's no good, though, is it?" the Broker asked, with affable directness.
"Between ourselves, it isn't worth a damn," the other blithely assured him.
The Scotchman mused with bent brows. "There ought still to be money in it," he said, with an air of conviction.
