‘And to get the bargain cancelled,’ Craig pursued, ‘you come to me.’
‘I come to you,’ repeated Simon Lock.
‘Yet you could have no direct knowledge that I had any influence over these shares.’
‘No direct knowledge,’ said Lock; ‘but an indirect knowledge. Perhaps,’ he added, in a peculiar tone, ‘I know more than you guess.’
‘As for example?’
‘Perhaps I could answer the question, which certainly demands an answer, how you, a mere manager of a branch of our bank, in receipt of a not excessive salary, found the money to become a power on the Westralian market. As the chairman of the directors of the bank I have, I think, Mr. Craig, the right to put that question.’
‘You have first to prove that I indeed am a power on the Westralian market.’
‘The proof of that is in the mere fact that I—I—am here at the present moment.’
Raphael Craig smiled.
‘You are correct,’ he said. ‘That fact is a proof in itself. I admit that I am a power. To save unnecessary words, I frankly admit that I hold La Princesse Mine in the hollow of my hand. You have come to the proper person, Mr. Lock. We meet at last. And am I to understand that one object of your visit here is to discover how I became possessed of the means which a manipulator of markets must possess?’