"Well, that's business anyway!" said Mr. Bryany, taking a fresh cigarette and lighting it.
"It's how we do business down here," said Edward Henry, quite inaccurately; for it was not in the least how they did business down there.
Mr. Bryany asked, with a rather obvious anxiety:
"But when can you pay?"
"Oh, I'll send you a cheque in a day or two." And Edward Henry in his turn took a fresh cigarette.
"That won't do! That won't do!" cried Mr. Bryany. "I absolutely must have the money to-morrow morning in London. I can sell the option in London for eighty pounds—I know that."
"You must have it?"
"Must!"
They exchanged glances. And Edward Henry, rapidly acquiring new knowledge of human nature on the threshold of a world strange to him, understood that Mr. Bryany, with his private sitting-room and his investments in Seattle and Calgary, was at his wits' end for a bag of English sovereigns, and had trusted to some chance encounter to save him from a calamity. And his contempt for Mr. Bryany was that of a man to whom his bankers are positively servile.
"Here!" Mr. Bryany almost shouted. "Don't light your cigarette with my option!"