‘Ah!’
‘Then you decline to admit me further into your confidence?’ Richard doggedly persisted.
‘Redgrave,’ said the old man, standing up, my scheme is my own. It is the most precious thing I have—the one thing that has kept me alive, given me vitality, vivacity, strength, hope. During all these years I have shared it with none. Shall I share it now? Shall I share it with a man young enough to be my son, a man who forced himself into my house, wormed himself into the secrets of my private life? I shall not. It is too sacred a thing. You do not know what my scheme means to me; you cannot guess all that is involved in it. I can conceive that you might even laugh at my scheme—you who do not yet know what life is and what life means.’
Raphael Craig resumed with dignity his seat on the sofa. Richard was impressed by this exhibition of profound feeling on the part of the old man. He was inclined to admit, privately, that perhaps the old man was right—perhaps he did not know what life was and what life meant; perhaps there were things in life deeper, more terrible, than he had ever suspected.
A silence fell upon the room. The old man seemed not inclined to break it; Richard, still under the hypnotism of the scene, would not speak. To relieve the intensity of the moment he quietly opened the Westminster Gazette. The lamp had sunk lower and lower, and it was with difficulty that he could read. His eye, however, chanced to fall on the financial page, and there, as the heading of a paragraph in the ‘Notes,’ he saw these words: ‘LOCK RUMOURS.’ He brought the page nearer to his face, and read: ‘The rumours that the Lock group are in serious difficulties was again rife on ’Change to-day. Mr. Simon Lock, seen by one of our representatives, merely smiled when told of the prevalence of these sinister rumours. He gave our representative the somewhat cryptic answer that we should see what we should see. We do not doubt the truth of this remark. Dealing in the shares of the newly-floated “La Princesse” Gold Mining Company (Westralian) was very active this morning, but fell flat after lunch. The one-pound shares, which, after a sensational rise last week, fell on Thursday to a shade over par, are now at five and a half, with a distinct tendency to harden, in spite of the fact that the demand is slight.’
Richard looked up from the paper.
‘I see,’ he said, with interest, ‘that it is not absolutely all plain sailing even with the great Simon Lock. Did you read this paragraph here about him?’
‘No,’ murmured the old man. ‘Read it to me.’
Richard did so in the rapidly-dying light.
‘Very curious and interesting,’ said Raphael Craig. ‘I have sometimes permitted myself to wonder whether our respected chairman is, after all, the impregnable rock which he is usually taken for.’