"My mistake," he declared, in insistent tones, "was in not turning down science thirty years ago and going in bodily for business. Then I should have made my pile as you seem to have done. But I tried to do something of both.
Half the year I was assaying crushings, or running a level, or analyzing sugars, for a salary, and the other half Iwas trying to do a gamble with that salary on the strength of what I'd learned. You can't ring the bell that way.
You've got to be either a pig or a pup. You can't do both.
Now, for instance, if I'd come to London when you did, and brought my money with me instead of buying your concession with it----""Why, what good do you suppose you would have done?"Thorpe interrupted him with good-natured brusqueness.
"You'd have had it taken from you in a fortnight! Why, man, do you know what London is? You'd have had no more chance here than a naked nigger in a swamp-full of alligators.""You seem to have hit it off," the other objected.
"This is as fine a house as I was ever in."
"With me it's different," Thorpe replied, carelessly.
"I have the talent for money-making. I'm a man in armour.
The 'gators can't bite me, nor yet the rattle-snakes.""Yes--men are made up differently," Tavender assented, with philosophical gravity. Then he lurched gently in the over-large chair, and fixed an intent gaze upon his host.
"What did you make your money in?" he demanded, not with entire distinctness of enunciation. "It wasn't rubber, was it?"Thorpe shook his head. "There's no money in rubber.
I'm entirely in finance--on the Stock Exchange--dealing in differences," he replied, with a serious face.
The explanation seemed wholly acceptable to Tavender.
He mused upon it placidly for a time, with his reverend head pillowed askew against the corner of the chair.
Then he let his cigar drop, and closed his eyes.
The master of the house bent forward, and noiselessly helped himself to another glass of whiskey and water.
Then, sinking back again, he eyed his odd guest meditatively as he sipped the drink. He said to himself that in all the miraculous run of luck which the year had brought him, this was the most extraordinary manifestation of the lot.
It had been so easy to ignore the existence of this tiresome and fatuous old man, so long as he was in remote Mexico, that he had practically forgotten him. But he should not soon forget the frightened shock with which he had learned of his presence in London, that afternoon.
For a minute or two, there in his sister's book-shop, it had seemed as if he were falling through the air--as if the substantial earth had crumbled away from under him.
But then his nerve had returned to him, his resourceful brain had reasserted itself. With ready shrewdness he had gone out, and met the emergency, and made it the servant of his own purposes.
He could be glad now, unreservedly glad, that Tavender had come to London, that things had turned out as they had.
In truth, he stood now for the first time on solid ground.
When he thought of it, now, the risk he had been running all these months gave him a little sinking of the heart.
