“Clive Reed—Clive, my boy—is—is this true?”
“You know it is true, sir!” cried the young man savagely, as he now took up the Doctor’s rôle of patrolling the room. “Do you, who have known me from a boy, ask me whether I would have deliberately swindled you into putting your savings into a worthless venture?”
“No, no, not wilfully, my boy, but by a mistake.”
“Mistake! There was no mistake. Doctor, an enemy hath done this thing, and people are only too ready to believe the evil instead of the good. Well, I’m glad I know. But how is it that no report has reached me at the mine? Why, of course: I have seen no paper for days. I am so busy that I often do not open them when they come over from the town.”
“Then—then this really is a false report, Clive?”
“Literally false, sir, and you have thrown your thousands away.”
The Doctor groaned.
“No, no: not yet. There is hope. Look here. I must buy those shares back at once.”
“Bah!” exclaimed Clive. “Look here, Doctor: if I were dangerously ill I would sooner trust you than any man in London; but in money matters I think just as my poor father thought.”
“That I was a mere baby? Yes, he always told me so,” said the Doctor, with a sigh. “But I made a lot of money, too.”