He went on smoking and listening, and asking an unenlightened question now and then, in a manner which was as far from being a deterrent as the largely unilluminated expression of his face was.
“Of course money is wanted,” Palliser said at length. “Money is always wanted, and as much when a scheme is a success as when it isn't. Good names, with a certain character, are wanted. The fact of your inheritance is known everywhere; and the fact that you are an American is a sort of guaranty of shrewdness.”
“Is it?” said T. Tembarom. “Well,” he added slowly, “I guess Americans are pretty good business men.”
Palliser thought that this was evolving upon perfectly natural lines, as he had anticipated it would. The fellow was flattered and pleased. You could always reach an American by implying that he was one of those who specially illustrate enviable national characteristics.
He went on in smooth, casual laudation:
“No American takes hold of a scheme of this sort until he knows jolly well what he's going to get out of it. You were shrewd enough,” he added significantly, “about Hutchinson's affair. You `got in on the ground floor' there. That was New York forethought, by Jove!”
Tembarom shuffled a little in his chair, and grinned a faint, pleased grin.
“I'm a man of the world, my boy—the business world,” Palliser commented, hoping that he concealed his extreme satisfaction. “I know New York, though I haven't lived there. I'm only hoping to. Your air of ingenuous ignorance is the cleverest thing about you,” which agreeable implication of the fact that he had been privately observant and impressed ought to have fetched the bounder if anything would.
T. Tembarom's grin was no longer faint, but spread itself. Palliser's first impression was that he had “fetched” him. But when he answered, though the very crudeness of his words seemed merely the result of his betrayal into utter tactlessness by soothed vanity, there was something—a shade of something—not entirely satisfactory in his face and nasal twang.
“Well, I guess,” he said, “New York DID teach a fellow not to buy a gold brick off every con man that came along.”