Jacob sipped his champagne and found it excellent.
“Very well,” he assented, “make it fifteen hundred between you and I’ll take the whole thing over.”...
Mr. Montague and his companion sat for an hour over another bottle of wine after their guest had departed. The faces of both were flushed and their voices were a little husky, but they were filled with the complacency of men who have come out on the right side of a deal. Only Mr. Montague, every now and then, gave voice to some faint regret.
“He’s such a prize mug, James,” he said. “It seems a shame we couldn’t have handled him for something bigger.”
“What are you grumbling at?” Mr. Littleham replied, letting loose another button of his waistcoat. “We’re getting four thou apiece profit on the sale of the land, and he’s standing the racket for all of ’em who don’t pay up, and there’ll be a good few more of them than he fancies. Then by this time next week we can take up our option on the Cropstone Wood, Water and Electric Light Company, and if Mr. Jacob Pratt thinks he’s in on that deal, he’s making the mistake of his life. I ain’t surprised so much at the land purchasers,” the builder went on reflectively. “They’re all the same. They buy a plot of land, and they think the Lord will send them gas and water and that sort of thing, and that the price is fixed by Act of Parliament and they can’t be diddled. But a man like Pratt, laying out the money he has, and simply knowing that there was a water and electric light plant on which you and I had an option, and imagining we should take him in without an agreement or even a letter—take him in on a proposition likely to pay at least thirty per cent—well, it’s a fair knockout!”
“We ought to have made our fortunes out of a jay like that,” Mr. Montague agreed, with a shade of sadness in his tone.
About a fortnight later, two very agitated looking visitors burst precipitately into Jacob’s outer office. Mr. Montague’s complexion was of that pasty hue described as chalky white. He was breathing heavily, and he had lost all that nice precision of speech intended to convey the suggestion that in his leisure hours he was a man of culture. Mr. Littleham was still more out of breath. His necktie had disappeared around his neck, and beads of perspiration were standing out upon his forehead.
“Where’s the guv’nor?” Mr. Montague almost shouted.