"Are these the shares you bought, Meyer?" he asked in a hushed whisper.
Wilmer-Steck nodded vigorously.
"They're going to make a fortune for us. Gushers blowing oil two hundred yards in the air — that's the news you'll see in the papers tomorrow. I've never worked so hard and fast in my life, getting Tombs to —"
"Who?" asked the brown bowler huskily.
"Captain Tombs — the mug I was working. But it's brain that does it, as I'm always saying… What's the matter with you, Fred — are you feeling ill?"
Mr. Julian Lamantia swivelled round in his chair.
"Do you know anything about these shares, Jorman?" he demanded.
The brown bowler swallowed.
"I ought to," he said. "I was doing a big trade in them three or four years ago. And that damned fool has paid five hundred pounds of our money for 'em — to the same man that swindled me of thirty pounds only last week! There never was a British Honduras Mineral Development Trust till I invented it and printed the shares myself. And that — that —"
Meyer leaned feebly on the desk.