“Perhaps,” said Onslow, “he won’t have the chance. Other hands on that steamer will have to share the secret in whole or in part. Perhaps they won’t all of them come through it alive. If you remember that we are plotting deliberate piracy on the high seas, you will recognize that there is precedent for a considerable percentage of casualties.”
The City man shuddered. Through the double windows came the sullen roar of a London street, and in imagination he seemed to distinguish the howl of the crowd joined in execration against him.
His eye fell upon a paper on the desk. It was the formal notice from her bankers that his wife’s account was heavily overdrawn. He lifted the paper, and tore it with his teeth; and then he smote the table with a shut fist, so that geysers flew from the inkwells. But his passion found no outlet in words. He spoke in his platform voice, and said nothing about the prime compelling force.
“We will not talk of these unpleasant details, if you please, Mr. Onslow. I—my heart is weak, I think, and they turn me sick. But at whatever cost, we must go through with the affair. It is necessary that I make a heavy coup within the next month, or the consequences may be disastrous.”
“Marmaduke Rivers and Shelf will go down? Quite so. I’m also at the end of my cash balance, so that money seems to be the impelling power for each of us. But come now, wake up, sir, and let’s get on with the business. I’m not so sweet on this City atmosphere of yours that I care to spend another morning down here if it can be avoided. How are you going to raise the specie?”
“I’ll proceed about it at once,” said Shelf, pressing another of the buttons on his desk. “You may as well witness every step of the process.”
In answer to the bell, Fairfax came into the room, nodded rather stiffly to Onslow, and turned to Shelf with an expectant: “Yes, Sir?”
In terse, business-like phrase his principal touched upon the silver crisis in America, and the gold famine in the Southern States. Then he explained the external view of his projected enterprise.
“The Port Edes,” he said, “is in the Herculaneum Dock, returned on our hands to-day. Wire Liverpool at once, asking for freights to Norfolk Virginia, Pensacola Florida, Mobile Alabama, or New Orleans, at lowest rates. New Orleans is her final port, and offer that at fifteen per cent. less. Captain Owen Kettle will be in command, and he sails in four days from this. When you have deputed your clerks to do this, go yourself to the bank and negotiate for half a million in gold, to be delivered on board the Port Edes in dock. The insurance policy on the money will be deposited with the bank to secure them in full for the loan itself, and for their other charges the credit of the house will easily suffice. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly,” said Fairfax; “but I should like to remind you of one thing: wharf thefts at New Orleans are notorious, and you’ll have to pay heavily to insure against them.”