"As bad as that," he answered.
"You can't tell me anything about your scheme yet?"
"Not yet."
"How is it," she asked, "that they have been allowed to operate in wheat to this enormous extent?"
"Well, for one thing," he told her, "the company has been planned and worked out with simply diabolical cleverness. They are inside the law all the time, and they manage to keep there. Their agents are so camouflaged that you can't tell for whom they are buying. Then they command an immense capital."
"The others must have found it, then," she observed. "My husband is almost without means."
"Phipps has supporters," Wingate said thoughtfully. "They'll carry on this combine until the last moment, until a Government commission, or something of the sort, looks like intervening. Then they'll probably let a dozen of their subsidiary companies go smash, and Peter Phipps, Skinflint Martin and Rees will be multimillionaires. Incidentally, the whole of their enormous profits will have come from the working classes."
"However visionary it is, I want to know about your scheme," she persisted.
"I cannot make up my mind to bring you into it," he declared doubtfully.
"It is practically a one-man show, and it is—well, a little primitive."
"Do you think I mind that?" she asked eagerly. "The only point worth considering is, could I help? You know in your heart that you could not make me afraid."