You will see that a meeting could be held at noon tomorrow, and within half an hour could make you a ruined man.""I don't know--would you call it quite ruined?"commented Thorpe. "I should still have a few sovereigns to go on with.""A criminal prosecution would be practically inevitable--after such a disclosure," Plowden reminded him, with augmented severity of tone.
"Don't mix the two things up," the other urged.
There seemed to the listener to be supplication in the voice.
"It's the action of the Committee that you said you could influence. That's what we were talking about.
You say there will be a special meeting at noon tomorrow----"I said there could be one," Plowden corrected him.
"All right. There CAN be one. And do you say that there can be proof,--proof against me of fraud,--produced at that meeting?""Yes--I say that," the nobleman affirmed, quietly.
"And further still--do you say that it rests with you whether that proof shall be produced or not?"Lord Plowden looked into the impassive, deep-eyed gaze which covered him, and looked away from it again.
"I haven't put it in just that form," he said, hesitatingly.
"But in essentials--yes, that may be taken as true.""And what is your figure? How much do you want for holding this proof of yours back, and letting me finish scooping the money of your Hebrew friends Aronson and Rostocker?"The peer raised his head, and shot a keenly enquiring glance at the other. "Are they my friends?" he asked, with challenging insolence.
"I'm bound to assume that you have been dealing with them, just as you are dealing with me." Thorpe explained his meaning dispassionately, as if the transaction were entirely commonplace. "You tell them that you're in a position to produce proof against me, and ask them what they'll give for it. Then naturally enough you come to me, and ask what I'll be willing to pay to have the proof suppressed.
I quite understand that I must bid against these men--and of course I take it for granted that, since you know their figure, you've arranged in your mind what mine is to be. I quite understand, too, that I am to pay more than they have offered. That is on account of 'friendly interest.'""Since you allude to it," Lord Plowden observed, with a certain calm loftiness of tone, "there is no harm in saying that you WILL pay something on that old score.
Once you thrust the promise of something like a hundred thousand pounds positively upon me. You insisted on my believing it, and I did so, like a fool. I came to you to redeem the promise, and you laughed in my face.
Very well. It is my turn now. I hold the whip-hand, and Ishould be an ass not to remember things. I shall want that entire one hundred thousand pounds from you, and fifty thousand added to it 'on account of the 'friendly interest,' as you so intelligently expressed it."
Thorpe's chin burrowed still deeper upon his breast.
"It's an outrage," he said with feeling. Then he added, in tones of dejected resignation: "When will you want it?""At the moment when the payments of Rostocker and Aronson are made to you, or to your bankers or agents," Lord Plowden replied, with prepared facility. He had evidently given much thought to this part of the proceedings. "And of course I shall expect you to draw up now an agreement to that effect.
I happen to have a stamped paper with me this time.
And if you don't mind, we will have it properly witnessed--this time."
Thorpe looked at him with a disconcertingly leaden stare, the while he thought over what had been proposed.
"That's right enough," he announced at last, "but I shall expect you to do some writing too. Since we're dealing on this basis, there must be no doubt about the guarantee that you will perform your part of the contract.""The performance itself, since payment is conditional upon it--" began Plowden, but the other interrupted him.
"No, I want something better than that. Here--give me your stamped paper." He took the bluish sheet, and, without hesitation, wrote several lines rapidly. "Here--this is my promise,"he said, "to pay you 150,000 pounds, upon your satisfactory performance of a certain undertaking to be separately nominated in a document called 'A,' which we will jointly draw up and agree to and sign, and deposit wherever you like--for safe keeping. Now, if you'll sit here, and write out for me a similar thing--that in consideration of my promise of 150,000 pounds, you covenant to perform the undertaking to be nominated in the document 'A'--and so on."Lord Plowden treated as a matter of course the ready and business-like suggestion of the other. Taking his place at the desk in turn, he wrote out what had been suggested.
Thorpe touched a bell, and the clerk who came in perfunctorily attested the signatures upon both papers.
Each principal folded and pocketed the pledge of the other.
"Now," said Thorpe, when he had seated himself again at the desk, "we are all right so far as protection against each other goes. If you don't mind, I will draw up a suggestion of what the separate document 'A' should set forth. If you don't like it, you can write one."He took more time to this task, frowning laboriously over the fresh sheet of foolscap, and screening from observation with his hand what he was writing. Finally, the task seemed finished to his mind. He took up the paper, glanced through it once more, and handed it in silence to the other.
In silence also, and with an expression of arrested attention, Lord Plowden read these lines:
