"Yes, they say that he is going to turn the world topsy-turvy before he's done."
"The world's good enough for me," was the reply, "and if I'd my way, these people who invent things should all be taken out and shot. I'm tired of inventions, they make life move too quickly. The good old times were best, when it took eight hours to get from Brighton to London, and one could not have telegrams from one's office to worry one."
"Perhaps you're right," said the first man. "But still, people look at things differently now-a-days. At any rate, Gouldesbrough is said to be one of the leading men in England to-day."
"He doesn't look happy over it," replied his companion. "He looks like a death's-head."
"Well, you know, he's mixed up in the Rathbone mystery in a sort of way."
"Oh yes, of course; he was engaged to the girl who chucked him over for the Johnny who has disappeared, wasn't he?"
"That's it. Just watch him, poor wretch; doesn't he look pipped?"
"Upon my word, the perspiration's standing out on his forehead in beads. He seems as if——"
"As if he had been overworking and overeating. He wants a Turkish bath, I expect. Now then, Jones, what do you really think about the fall in South Africans? Will they recover in the next two months? That's what I want to know; that's what I want to be certain of."
Sir William had just left the up-stairs apartments of the Pooles. He had rung for the lift and entered, without a word to the attendant, who had glanced fearfully at the tall, pale man with the flashing eyes and the wet face. Once or twice the lift-man noticed that the visitor raised his hand to his neck above the collar and seemed to press upon it, and it may have been fancy on the lift-man's part—though he was not an imaginative person—but he seemed to hear a sound like a drum beating under a blanket, and he wondered if the gentleman was troubled with heart-disease.