“Well, I’ll back my judgment all the same,” he answered hotly, “which is a good deal more than you will. You talk of common-sense, and lay down vague, not to say inane rules for other people to follow, and pose as a sort of Book of Wisdom thrown open to the public every afternoon in this smoking-room; but anybody can talk. Now, I’ll bet you a thousand pounds that you’ll not take the advice of your fellow-man for twelve consecutive hours. And, what is more, I’ll bet you another thousand that I’ll do the other thing and go distinctly contrary to every request, suggestion, or scrap of advice offered me in the same space of time. And then we’ll see about your knowledge of human nature, and who looks the biggest fool at the end of the day.”
I repeat, it was after luncheon, and no man unfamiliar with Norton Bellamy can have any idea of the studied insolence, the offence, the diabolic sneer with which he accompanied this preposterous suggestion. I was, however, silent for the space of three seconds; then he made another remark to Mathers, and that settled it.
“Some of us are like the chap who said he’d take his dying oath the cat was grey. Then they asked him to bet a halfpenny that it was, and he wouldn’t. So bang goes another wind-bag!”
He was marching out with all the honours when I lost my temper and took the brute at his word.
“Done!” I said. Think of it! A man of five-and-fifty, with some reputation for general mental stability, and a member of the Committee of the Stock Exchange!
“You’ll take me?” he asked, and there was an evil light in the man’s hard blue eyes, while his red whiskers actually bristled as he spoke. “You’ll back yourself to follow every scrap of advice given you throughout one whole day for a thousand pounds?”
In my madness I answered, only intent upon arranging miseries for him:
“Yes, if you’ll back yourself to act in an exactly contrary manner.”
“Most certainly. It’s my ordinary rule of life,” he replied. “I never do take advice. I’m not a congenital idiot. Let us say to-morrow.”
Now, upon the Stock Exchange we have a universal system by which honour stands for security. In our peculiar business relations this principle is absolutely necessary. And it seldom fails. There is a simple, pathetic trust amongst us unknown in other walks of life. It can only be compared to that universal spirit said to have existed in King Alfred’s days, when we are invited to believe that people left their jewellery about on the hedges with impunity, and crime practically ceased out of the land. One’s only assumption can be that the jewellery of those benighted days was not worth the risk—though, understand me, I am merely speaking of the times, not of King Alfred, who was, without question, the greatest Englishman of whom we have any record. So when Bellamy and I made this fatuous bet, we trusted each the other. I knew that, with all his faults, the man was absolutely straight-forward and honest; and I felt that, having once taken his wager, I should either win it—at personal inconvenience impossible to estimate before the event—or lose and frankly pay.