"Of course. The fellows that we're going to squeeze would move heaven and hell to prevent our getting that Settlement, if they got wind of what was going on. The only weak point in our game is just there. Absolutely everything hangs on the Settlement being granted. Naturally, then, our play is to concentrate everything on getting it granted.
We don't want to raise the remotest shadow of a suspicion of what we're up to, till after we're safe past that rock.
So we go on in the way to attract the least possible attention.
You or your jobber makes the ordinary application for a Special Settlement, with your six signatures and so on;and I go abroad quietly, and the office is as good as shut up, and nobody makes a peep about Rubber Consols--and the thing works itself. You do see it, don't you?""I see well enough the things that are to be seen,"replied Semple, with a certain brevity of manner.
"There was a sermon of my father's that I remember, and it had for its text, 'We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.'"Thorpe, pondering this for a moment, nodded his head.
"Semple," he said, bringing his chair forward to the desk, "that's what I've come for. I want to spread my cards on the table for you. I know the sum you've laid out already, in working this thing. We'll say that that is to be paid back to you, as a separate transaction, and we'll put that to one side. Now then, leaving that out of consideration, what do you think you ought to have out of the winnings, when we pull the thing off? Mind, I'm not thinking of your 2,000 vendor's shares----""No--I'm not thinking much of them, either," interposed Semple, with a kind of dry significance.
"Oh, they'll be all right," Thorpe affirmed. He laughed unconsciously as he did so. "No, what I want to get at is your idea of what should come to you, as a bonus, when I scoop the board.""Twenty thousand pounds," said Semple, readily.
Thorpe's slow glance brightened a trifle. "I had thought thirty would be a fairer figure," he remarked, with an effort at simplicity.
The broker put out his under-lip. "You will find people rather disposed to distrust a man who promises more than he's asked," he remarked coldly.
"Yes--I know what you mean," Thorpe hurried to say, flushing awkwardly, even though the remark was so undeserved;"but it's in my nature. I'm full of the notion of doing things for people that have done things for me.
That's the way I'm built. Why"--he halted to consider the advisability of disclosing what he had promised to do for Lord Plowden, and decided against it--"why, without you, what would the whole thing have been worth to me? Take one thing alone--the money for the applications--I could have no more got at it than I could at the Crown Jewels in the Tower. I've wondered since, more than once--if you don't mind the question--how did you happen to have so much ready money lying about.""There are some Glasgow and Aberdeen folk who trust me to invest for them," the broker explained. "If they get five per cent. for the four months, they'll be very pleased.
And so I shall be very pleased to take thirty thousand instead of twenty--if it presents itself to your mind in that way. You will give me a letter to that effect, of course.""Of course," assented Thorpe. "Write it now, if you like."He pushed his chair forward, closer to the desk, and dipped a pen in the ink. "What I want to do is this," he said, looking up. "I'll make the promise for thirty-two thousand, and I'll get you to let me have two thousand in cash now--a personal advance. I shall need it, if I'm to hang about on the Continent for four months. I judge you think it'll be four months before things materialize, eh?""The Special Settlement, in the natural order of events, would come shortly after the Christmas holidays.
That is nearly three months. Then the work of taking fort-nightly profits will begin--and it is for you to say how long you allow that to go on.""But about the two thousand pounds now," Thorpe reminded him.
"I think I will do that in this way," said Semple, kicking his small legs nonchalantly. "I will buy two thousand fully-paid shares of you, for cash down, NOT vendor's shares, you observe--and then I will take your acknowledgment that you hold them for me in trust up to a given date.
In that way, I would not at all weaken your market, and I would have a stake in the game." "Your stake's pretty big, already," commented Thorpe, tentatively.
"It's just a fancy of mine," said the other, with his first smile. "I like to hold shares that are making sensational advances. It is very exciting.""All right," said Thorpe, in accents of resignation.
He wrote out two letters, accepting the wording which Semple suggested from his perch on the desk, and then the latter, hopping down, took the chair in turn and wrote a cheque.
"Do you want it open?" he asked over his shoulder.
"Are you going to get it cashed at once?"
"No--cross it," said the other. "I want it to go through my bankers. It'll warm their hearts toward me.
I shan't be going till the end of the week, in any event.
I suppose you know the Continent by heart."
"On the contrary, very little indeed. I've had business in Frankfort once, and in Rotterdam once, and in Paris twice.
That is all."
"But don't you ever do anything for pleasure?"Thorpe asked him, as he folded the cheque in his pocket-book.
"Oh yes--many things," responded the broker, lightly.
"It's a pleasure, for example, to buy Rubber Consols at par.""Oh, if you call it buying," said Thorpe, and then softened his words with an apologetic laugh. "I didn't tell you, did I? I've been spending Saturday and Sunday with Plowden--you know, the Lord Plowden on my Board.""I know of him very well," observed the Scotchman.
