“You say a fortune? How much?”
“Oh, anything from half a million gulden upwards.” I spoke airily, as though a few hundred thousand gulden were a matter of comparative insignificance.
He smoked for a while in silence, his brows knitted thoughtfully:
“Would your friend go into it?” he asked.
“It’s the sort of thing I should take up myself right now if I had your influence with me,” I replied.
“You Americans are a wonderful people, Mr. Bergwyn. We’ll speak of this to-morrow. I’ll think it over.”
“It’s worth doing, not only thinking over;” and as I returned him his report I added: “And this man really deserves some sort of compensation.”
He shrugged his shoulders and laughed. “He shall have an official letter praising his zeal; and we shall hear no more of that part of it.”
We did talk it over the next day and we fixed up a working arrangement. Then he spoke to me about the Servian loan.
“You’re not going into it, are you?”