"Why, Rainsford, you were as stony broke as the rest of us when I left. Things looking up, eh?"
"Of course. I told you it was a case of 'down to-day, up to-morrow'—told you at the time. And it's my belief you'd have done better to have remained here." Then lowering his voice; "Where's the pirate?"
"Coming on."
Rainsford whistled, and looked knowing.
"What do you say?" cut in Rankin, "a drop of gin and soda wouldn't hurt us, eh?" Then while they moved round to the Exchange bar, he went on; "I've got a thing that would suit you to a hair, Stanninghame. I'd take it up myself if I could, but I'm only an agent in the matter."
"Shares, eh?"
"Yes—Skinner and Sacks."
"Dead off. See here, Rankin—you must off-load them on somebody else. If I were next door to certain of making half a million out of it, even then I wouldn't touch any sort of investment connected with this place. No, not to save my immortal soul—if I've got one, which at times seems doubtful." And there was something in Laurence's laugh—evoked by old time recollections—which convinced the other that no business was to be done in this quarter at any rate.
There was method in the way in which Laurence had sought to dawdle away the morning. He had arrived late the night before, and as yet had made no inquiries. How strange it all seemed! Surely it was but yesterday that he was here last. Surely he had slept, and had dreamed the portentous events which had intervened. They could not have been real. But the stones—the great diamonds—they were real enough; the metal box too—the "Sign of the Spider."
How was he thus transformed? Later in the day, as he stood on the stoep knocking at the door of Mrs. Falkner's house, he was conscious that his heart hardly beat quicker, that his pulses were as firm and even as ever. Four years of a hard, stern schooling had done it.