"You don't, huh? Of course you don't! Have you ever seen anything but a shop girl's ankles? You—don't see! You're a director, so is Merville. You've drawn directors' fees. I'm not a director—it doesn't matter a damn to me what they say."
The name of Jan Steppe seldom appeared amongst the officers or directors of a company. He had his nominees who voted according to the orders they received.
"What makes it so almighty bad is that I was floating the Midwell Traction Corporation next week. We'll have to put that back now, but it will keep. What are you going to do?"
"I don't know exactly what to do," said Ronnie. It was the first time he had ever been called upon to justify his directors' fees. "I know a few men—but I doubt if I can do anything. Fleet Street is a little rigid in these things."
"Get an article in somewhere," ordered Steppe peremptorily. "Take this line: That we bought the Klein River Mine on the report of the best engineer in South Africa. We did. There's no lie about that. Mackenzie—he's in a lunatic asylum now. And the report was in his own handwriting, so there won't be a copy. And you needn't mention that he is in a lunatic asylum, most people think he is dead."
"Didn't he write to us complaining that we only put an extract from his report into the prospectus?"
"Never mind about that!" snarled Steppe. "I didn't come here for a conversation. He did write; said that we'd published a sentence away from the context. He didn't think I was going to put the worst into the prospectus, did he? What he said was, that the Klein River Mine would be one of the richest in South Africa if we could get over difficulties of working, which he said were insuperable. He was right. They are. The only way to work that mine is with deep sea divers! Now, have this right, Morelle, and try to forget Flossie's blue eyes and Winnie's golden hair. This is business. Your business. You've got to take that report (Moropulos will give it to you, but you mustn't take it from the office) and extract all that is good in it. At the general meeting you have to produce your copy and read it. If anybody wants to see the original, refer 'em to Mackenzie. You've got to make Klein River look alive and you haven't to defend it, d'ye hear me? You've got to handle that mine as though you wished it was yours, huh? No defence! The hundred-pound shares are at twelve; you've got to make 'em look worth two hundred. And it is dead easy if you go the right way about it. Ask any pickpocket. The easiest way to steal a pocketbook is to go after the man that's just lost his watch. Make 'em think that the best thing they can do is to buy more Klein Rivers and hold them, huh? You've got to think it, or you won't say it. Get this meeting through without a fuss, and there's a thousand for you."
"I'll try," said Ronnie.
Yet, it was in no confident mood that he faced a hall-full of enraged stockholders a week later. The meeting was described as "noisy"; it ended in the passing of a vote of confidence in the directors. Ronnie was elated; no other man but Steppe could have induced him to present a forged document to a meeting of critical stockholders, and when Klein Rivers rose the next day to seventeen, he was not as enthusiastic as Dr. Merville, who 'phoned his congratulations on what was undoubtedly a remarkable achievement.
He spoke of nothing else that day, and Beryl basked in reflected approval. Her father knew nothing. He wondered why Ronnie, whom he did not like overmuch, called with greater frequency. He had too large an experience of life to harbor any misconception as to his second cousin's private character, although he would, in other circumstances, have passively accepted him as a son-in-law. Men take a very tolerant view of other men's weaknesses. The theory that the world holds a patch of arable land reserved for young men to put under wild oats, and that without exciting the honest farmers whose lands adjoin, is a theory that dies hard as the cultivated fields increase in number.