All this was as obvious as the nose on one's face.
But a weapon for what? Thorpe, as this question put itself in his mind, halted before a shop-window full of soft-hued silk fabrics, to muse upon an answer.
The delicate tints and surfaces of what was before his eyes seemed somehow to connect themselves with the subject.
Plowden himself was delicately-tinted and refined of texture.
Vindictiveness was too plain and coarse an emotion to sway such a complicated and polished organism.
He reasoned it out, as he stood with lack-lustre gaze before the plate-glass front, aloof among a throng of eager and talkative women who pressed around him--that Plowden would not have spent his money on a mere impulse of mischief-making. He would be counting upon something more tangible than revenge--something that could be counted and weighed and converted into a bank-balance. He smiled when he reached this conclusion--greatly surprising and confusing a matronly lady into whose correct face he chanced to be looking at the instant--and turning slowly, continued his walk.
At the office of the hotel, he much regretted not having driven instead, for he learned that Semple had twice telephoned from the City for him. It was late in the afternoon--he noted with satisfaction that the clock showed it to be already past the hour of the Tavender-Gafferson appointment,--but he had Semple's office called up, upon the chance that someone might be there. The clerk had not consumed more than ten minutes in the preliminaries of finding out that no one was there--Thorpe meanwhile passing savage comments to the other clerks about the British official conception of the telephone as an instrument of discipline and humiliation--when Semple himself appeared in the doorway.
The Broker gave an exclamation of relief at seeing Thorpe, and then, apparently indifferent to the display of excitement he was exhibiting, drew him aside.
"Come somewhere where we can talk," he whispered nervously.
Thorpe had never seen the little Scotchman in such a flurry.
"We'll go up to my rooms," he said, and led the way to the lift.
Upstairs, Semple bolted the door of the sitting-room behind them, and satisfied himself that there was no one in the adjoining bedroom. Then, unburdening himself with another sigh, he tossed aside his hat, and looked keenly up at the big man. "There's the devil to pay,"he said briefly.
Thorpe had a fleeting pride in the lethargic, composed front he was able to present. "All right,"he said with forced placidity. "If he's got to be paid, we'll pay him." He continued to smile a little.
"It's nah joke," the other hastened to warn him.
"I have it from two different quarters. An application has been made to the Stock Exchange Committee, this afternoon, to intervene and stop our business, on the ground of fraud.
It comes verra straight to me."
Thorpe regarded his Broker contemplatively. The news fitted with precision into what he had previously known;it was rendered altogether harmless by the precautions he had already taken. "Well, keep your hair on,"he said, quietly. "If there were fifty applications, they wouldn't matter the worth of that soda-water cork.
Won't you have a drink?"
Semple, upon reflection, said he would. The unmoved equipoise of the big man visibly reassured him. He sipped at his bubbling tumbler and smacked his thin lips.
