"I humbly did my best, sir; I was assured, really and truly, that a quarter was the most they'd allow, sir; I truly believed I wasn't risking more than 15,000 of yours, sir; I did truly."
"Oh! do be quiet," said his principal, as he turned again to the letter. His head hurt him, and he had a buzzing in the ears. He felt he wasn't fit for all this. It was a cruel injustice to a man barely on his feet after a glimpse of the grave.
The Clerk had the wisdom to hold his tongue and to wait. And as he waited it dawned upon Mr. Clutterbuck that he held 60,000 Congoes; the Congoes he had heard talked of in the train; the Congoes of which the papers had been full during the long listless days when he had lain beside his window looking out into the little sunlit garden; the Congoes with which every feature of the repeated view from that window had become grotesquely associated in his invalid imagination. He was just about to speak again, perhaps to say the something which his Clerk most dreaded, when he was swamped by a realisation of what had happened.
What Mr. Clutterbuck in health would have seen in five or ten minutes, Mr. Clutterbuck in convalescence at last grasped, at least as to its main lines. He remembered two men in the train as he went in, and their angry discussion: how one who pooh-poohed the whole affair and said they would not go beyond three before next settling day; and the other, who was equally confident, swore that they could not fail to pass five and might touch seven. At the lowest the paper ready to his hands was 60,000 of those same.
He deliberately settled his face and said to the Clerk in an impassive and altered tone:
"Have you heard what people are offering?"
"Well, sir, it's all talk so far," answered the Clerk. "Some were saying two and a half, and I heard one gentleman say two and five-eighths; but it's all talk, sir."
He watched his master narrowly, standing a little behind him and scrutinising his face as he bent over the letter and read its short contents for the fourth time. He was well content with the result of that scrutiny.
As for Mr. Clutterbuck, he now perceived quite clearly (and was astonished to discern his own quiet acquiescence in the discovery) that he was at that moment—by some accident which mystified him—the possessor of over £200,000 in one department of his investments alone. He sighed profoundly, and said in something like his old voice: