He cut the cigar carefully with a club tool, and pushed the match-stand across the table with a brusque gesture. George would not thank him for the cigar.
"You're on that Indian barracks, aren't you?"
"Yes. They're in a Hades of a hurry."
"Well, my factory is in much more of a hurry."
George was startled. He had heard nothing of the factory for a month, and had assumed that the war had scotched the enterprise.
He said:
"Then the war won't stop you?"
Sir Isaac shook his head slowly, with an arrogant smile. It then occurred to George that this man differed strangely from all other men—because the sinister spell of the war had been powerless over him alone. All other men bore the war in their faces and in their gestures, but this man did not.
"I'm going to make munitions now—explosives. I'm going to have the biggest explosives factory in the world. However, the modifications in the general plan won't be serious. I want to talk to you about that."
"Have you got contracts, then, already?"