“But,” she commented slowly, “you say there are no shares to be bought—and yet as I understand it, there are those five thousand that were sent out to the people who really applied.”
“Bravo, Lou!” he answered her jovially. “You actually do understand the thing. You've put your finger straight on the point. It is true that those shares are out against us—or might be turned against us if they could be bought up. But in reality, they don't count at all. In the first place, you see, they're scattered about among small holders, country clergymen and old maids on an annuity and so on—all over the country. Even if these people were all traced, and hunted up, suppose it was worth the trouble and expense, they wouldn't sell. The bigger the price they were offered, the more mulish they would be about holding. That's always the way with them. But even if they did all sell, their five thousand would be a mere drop in the bucket. There would be over twenty thousand others to be accounted for. That would be quite enough for my purposes. Oh, I figured all that out very carefully. My own first notion was to have the dummies apply for the whole hundred thousand, and even a little over. Then, you see, we might have allotted everything to the dummies, and sent back the money and applications of the genuine ones. But that would have been rather hard to manage with the Board. The Markiss would have said that the returns ought to be made pro rata—that is, giving everybody a part of what they applied for—and that would have mixed everything up. And then, too, if anybody suspected anything, why the Stock Exchange Committee would refuse us a special settlement—and, of course, without that the whole transaction is moonshine. It was far too risky, and we didn't send back a penny.”
“It's all pretty risky, I should think,” she declared as she rose. “I should think you'd lie awake more than ever now—now that you've built your hopes so high and it'd be so awful to have them come to nothing.”
He smilingly shook his head. “No, it can no more fail than that gas can fail to burn when you put a light to it. It's all absolute. My half-million is as right as if it were lying to my credit in the Bank of England. Oh, that reminds me,” he went on in a slightly altered tone—“it's damned comical, but I've got to ask you for a little money. I've only got about seven pounds at my bank, and just at the minute it would give me away fearfully to let Semple know I was hard up. Of course he'd let me have anything I wanted—but, you can see—I don't like to ask him just at the moment.”
She hesitated visibly, and scanned his face with a wistful gaze. “You're quite sure, Joel?”—she began—“and you haven't told me—how long will it be before you come into some of this money?”
“Well,”—he in turn paused over his words—“well, I suppose that by next week things will be in such shape that my bank will see I'm good for an overdraft. Oh heavens, yes! there'll be a hundred ways of touching some ready. But if you've got twenty or thirty pounds handy just now—I tell you what I'll do, Lou. I'll give you a three months bill, paying one hundred pounds for every sovereign you let me have now. Come, old lady: you don't get such interest every day, I'll bet.”
“I don't want any interest from you, Joel,” she replied, simply. “If you're sure I can have it back before Christmas, I think I can manage thirty pounds. It will do in the morning, I suppose?”
He nodded an amused affirmative. “Why—you don't imagine, do you,” he said, “that all this gold is to rain down, and none of it hit you? Interest? Why of course you'll get interest—and capital thrown in. What did you suppose?”
“I don't ask anything for myself,” she made answer, with a note of resolution in her voice. “Of course if you like to do things for the children, it won't be me who'll stand in their light. They've been spoiled for my kind of life as it is.”
“I'll do things for everybody,” he affirmed roundly. “Let's see—how old is Alfred?”