“Well—that is contrary to all my expectations—and intentions,” Thorpe resumed. “I don't want you to suffer by this unlooked-for change in the shape of things. You hold two thousand shares—only by accident they're the wrong kind of shares. Very well: I'll make them the right kind of shares. I'll have a transfer sent to you tomorrow, so that you can return those vendor's shares to me, and in exchange for them I'll give you two thousand fully-paid ordinary shares. You can sell these at once, if you like, or you can hold them on over one more settlement, whichever you please.”
“This is very munificent,” remarked Lord Chaldon, after an instant's self-communion. His tone was extremely gracious, but he displayed none of the enthusiastic excitement which Thorpe perceived now that he had looked for. The equanimity of Marquises, who were also ex-Ambassadors, was evidently a deeper-rooted affair than he had supposed. This elderly and urbane diplomat took a gift of thirty thousand pounds as he might have accepted a superior cigar.
A brief pause ensued, and was ended by another remark from the nobleman: “I thought for the moment of asking your advice—on this question of selling,” he continued. “But it will be put more appropriately, perhaps, in this way: Let me leave it entirely in your hands. Whatever you do will be right. I know so little of these things—and you know so much.”
Thorpe put out his lips a trifle, and looked away for an instant in frowning abstraction. “If it were put in that way—I think I should sell,” he said. “It's all right for me to take long chances—it's my game—but there's no reason why you should risk things. But let me put it in still another way,” he added, with the passing gleam of a new thought over the dull surface of his eye. “What do you say to our making the transaction strictly between ourselves? Here are shares to bearer, in the safe there. I say that two thousand of them are yours: that makes them yours. I give you my cheque for thirty thousand pounds—here, now, if you like—and that makes them mine again. The business is finished and done with—inside this room. Neither of us is to say anything about it to a soul. Does that meet your views?”
The diplomat pondered the proposition—again with a lengthened perturbation of the eyelids. “It would be possible to suggest a variety of objections, if one were of a sophistical turn of mind,” he said at last, smilingly reflective. “Yet I see no really insuperable obstacle in the path.” He thought upon it further, and went on with an enquiring upward glance directed suddenly at Thorpe: “Is there likely to be any very unpleasant hubbub in the press—when it is known that the annual meeting has been postponed?”
Thorpe shook his head with confidence. “No—you need have no fear of that. The press is all right. It's the talk of the City, I'm told—the way I've managed the press. It isn't often that a man has all three of the papers walking the same chalk-line.”
The Marquis considered these remarks with a puzzled air. Then he smiled faintly. “I'm afraid we're speaking of different things,” he suggested. “Apparently you refer to the financial papers. I had scarcely given them a thought. It does not seem to me that I should mind particularly what they said about me—but I should care a great deal about the other press—the great public press.”
“Oh, what do they know about these things?” said Thorpe, lightly. “So far as I can see, they don't know about anything, unless it gets into the police court, or the divorce court, or a court of some kind. They're the funniest sort of papers I ever saw. Seems as if they didn't think anything was safe to be printed until it had been sworn to. Why anybody should be afraid of them is more than I can see.”
“Nevertheless,” persisted his Lordship, blandly, “I should greatly dislike any public discussion of our Company's affairs. I hope it is quite clear that that can be avoided.”
“Absolutely!” Thorpe told him, with reassuring energy. “Why, discussions don't make themselves. Somebody has to kick before anything gets discussed. And who is to kick here? The public who hold the shares are not likely to complain because they've gone up fifteen hundred or two thousand per cent. And who else has any interest in what the Company, as a Company, does?”