‘No matter from what direction the force came?’
‘No matter from what direction. And, Sir Arthur,’ said Simon Lock impressively, ‘I shall find it out.’ He repeated the phrase still more impressively, ‘I shall find it out. Simon Lock has never yet been defeated, and he will not be defeated now. I began life, Sir Arthur, on half-a-crown a week. There were conspiracies against me then, but I upset them. At the age of fifty-five, on a slightly larger scale ‘—he smiled—‘I shall repeat the operations of my early youth.’
Simon Lock, like many self-made men, was extremely fond of referring to his early youth and the humbleness of his beginnings. He thought that it proved an absence of snobbery in his individuality.
‘And in the meantime?’
‘In the meantime, I frankly confess, Sir Arthur, we have sold more La Princesse shares than we can deliver. Nay, further, we have sold, I fear, more La Princesse shares than actually exist. We sold freely for the fall. I knew that the shares would fall soon after the flotation, and they did. But they have mysteriously risen again.’
‘And are still rising,’ Sir Arthur put in, nervously stroking his long thin beard.
‘Yes. We sold, I find, over two hundred thousand shares at three. They then fell, as you know, to about twenty-five shillings. Then they began to go up like a balloon. The market tightened like a drawn string. Sir Arthur, we were led into a trap. For once in a way some fellow has got the better of Simon Lock—temporarily, only temporarily. My brokers thought they were selling shares to the public in general, but they were selling to the agents of a single buyer. That is evident.’
‘How do we stand now?’
‘We have to deliver our shares in a week’s time. We have some eighty thousand shares in hand, bought at various prices up to five pounds. On those eighty thousand we shall just about clear ourselves. That leaves us over a hundred and twenty thousand yet to buy.’
‘At the best price we can obtain?’