“‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not going to do that. I’m going to be mixed up with this new company in no degree whatever. Flatly, I don’t believe in the thing one bit. It’s a notorious fact that freights are so low just now that thousands of tons of shipping is laid up because it can’t be run at a profit; and if you put more in commission, freights will tumble down still lower.’
“‘You speak from your ignorance,’ he said. ‘I should remind you that I am by far an older man, and have a much deeper experience. The business of Marmaduke Rivers and Shelf is a lasting monument of what my humble talents can accomplish, and you will some day see for yourself the newer company on an equal footing. Did you not notice what enthusiastic confidence in its prosperity those humble friends of mine showed this afternoon?’
“‘A fat lot they know about the shipping business,’ said I. ‘In the mood you worked them up to, they’d have believed in an advertising stock-broker’s circular if only there were a text at the head of the page.’
“Shelf pulled the check-string, and his brougham stopped against the kerb. ‘Mr. Fairfax,’ said he, ‘your attitude pains me. Let us part here for the time, and let us both pray that when next we meet you may be in a more Christian mind.’ Whereupon out I stepped, and came along here to Park Lane. Amy dear, I don’t like the look of things at all. The other business, the ‘Oceanic Steam Transport Company,’ as it is called officially, is by no means in a healthy condition, and, remembering that, it seems to me that starting this new company is something very nearly approaching a swindle. I believe that Theodore Shelf is finding out that he is in low water, and is getting desperate.”
“I don’t know about the last,” replied the girl, thoughtfully; “but as for being in low water, there I think you are wrong. Every week here they seem to spend more money than they did the week before. Mrs. Shelf was at a picture sale yesterday, and bought two old masters at four thousand guineas apiece, and it isn’t likely she’d throw away that sum on what is absolutely and entirely a luxury unless money were pretty plentiful with her.”
“It can’t go on at this pace,” said Fairfax. “I know what the limits of the business are, and I’m certain it can’t stand the drain on them which all this gorgeousness must entail. Last year the profits were almost nil, and yet did Mrs. Shelf retrench at all? Not a bit. She goes in for more and more display every week she lives. This pace must bring about a wreck, and if the ‘Oceanic Steam Transport Company’ goes down, it is an absolute certainty that this new ‘Brothers Company’ will be swamped with it.”
“And then?”
“More than a thousand poor people, for the most of them old, will find that the savings of a lifetime have vanished into nothingness before their eyes. It is an awful thing even to think such a suspicion against a man; but the idea is growing upon me, and Theodore Shelf saw what I thought when he showed me out of his brougham this afternoon.”
“Then what,” asked the girl in a horrified whisper, “will you do?”