At the bottom of the tower Mr. Blumenruth, radiant and triumphant, burst through the throng, flung himself upon them, and dragged them to a smart victoria which awaited them. He told them joyously that he had cleared eighty-seven thousand pounds, and protested that they should be his guests at his hotel as long as they stayed in Paris. On the way to it Sir Tancred got down to buy some cigars, and he was barely in the shop when the financier said in a jerky way to Tinker, "I saw a very neat little motor-car, which I should like to make you a present of. But I say—I don't want you to tell anyone—how—how ill I was up there. My spirit was all right, of course; but that rarefied air—acting on business worries—produced a state of nervous prostration. I—I wasn't quite myself, in fact."
Tinker looked at him with intelligent interest, and, closing one of his sunny blue eyes, said thoughtfully, "Nervous prostration? Is the motor a Panhard?"
"Yes," said Mr. Blumenruth.
"If you hadn't been so—so—upset, I've no doubt you'd have sailed the machine yourself," said Tinker warmly.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE BARON AND THE MONEY-LENDER
Sir Tancred would only stay four days in Paris with the grateful Blumenruth, because he wished Hildebrand Anne to have the sea air, for it seemed to him that he had not yet got back his full strength after the scarlet fever. They returned, therefore, to Brighton, and when the weather grew hotter, removed to the more bracing East Coast. Tinker was for sharing the three thousand pounds he had made out of his trip in the flying-machine equally with his father; but Sir Tancred would not hear of it. Chiefly to please him, however, he borrowed a thousand of it at five per cent., and invested the rest in Tinker's name. With this thousand-pound note and three notes of fifty pounds, he paid off the loan of a thousand pounds which he had borrowed from Mr. Robert Lambert, a money-lender, five years before, with the balance of the interest up to date, and found himself once more unencumbered save for a few small debts, and with plenty of money for his immediate needs.
During August and September they stayed at different country houses; and Fortune being in a kindly mood, the money remained untouched. In the middle of October they came to London to their usual rooms in the Hotel Cecil; and Sir Tancred was one morning at breakfast disagreeably surprised to receive from Mr. Robert Lambert a demand for the immediate payment of 1450 pounds. At first he thought it was a mistake, then he remembered that he had paid Mr. Lambert in notes; and that Mr. Lambert had promised to get at once from his bank the promissory note on which the money had been borrowed, and send it to him. The promissory note had not come, and the matter had passed from Sir Tancred's mind. Now, he perceived that, if Mr. Lambert chose to deny that payment, he was in no little of a plight.
After breakfast, therefore, he took a hansom, and drove to Mr. Lambert's office. The worthy money-lender received him at once, and with no less delay began to deny with every appearance of honest indignation that he had been paid the debt. Sir Tancred grew exceedingly disagreeable; he set forth with perfect frankness his opinion of Mr. Lambert's character, declared that he would rather go to that uncomfortable abode of contemptuous debtors, Holloway, than be swindled in so barefaced a fashion; and exclaiming, "You may go to your native Jericho, before I pay you a farthing, you thieving rascal!" went out of the office, and banged the door behind him.