“Mr. Petre, are you going my way?”
“I am going to the Splendide,” said Mr. Petre, caught.
“I am going past there,” said young Terrard; it was true enough, for he had determined to be going wherever Mr. Petre might deign to be bound.
The short shower had been over some few minutes. They strolled southward, and in a leisurely conversation full of simplicity and good humor and good sense Charlie Terrard with his frank blue eyes and frank yellow hair (that curled) had discovered before they reached Piccadilly that Mr. Petre had fixed on no broker in town: not one more than another; it was just like his eccentricities to buy at random and refuse to be bound; it was another millionaire eccentricity to buy through Charlie, and Charlie was only too happy to oblige. It was like yet another of his eccentricities not to appreciate, or to affect to ignore, the danger of delay and the necessity for early action. It was again so like the man, with his reputation for indifference to wealth, oddly coupled with a passion for accumulation, to leave it almost at a hazard how much he would buy and to affect indifference to the hour at which he bought. He seemed (really it was monstrous) not to know the price that day, and to have no idea of what they would open at on the morrow. It was Charlie Terrard who spoke tentatively of fifty thousand shares, “I think I shall make it fifty thousand,” he said. Did he say “shall” or “should”? Mr. Petre passed the figure almost with boredom. He heard also that they were wobbling round 2½. Were they? It was very interesting, no doubt. But he didn’t follow it up.
“All right!” said Mr. Petre. “Fifty thousand.” He wasn’t clear whether Charlie Terrard was going to buy from him, or on his own.
He wasn’t clear upon anything, except his mortal dread that any argument or discussion might bring forth a Monster Question which would give him away.
“All right. Fifty thousand.”
An astonishing passage; but things happen like that in this world. No, they don’t? Yes, they do.
The conversation continued leisured down the comparative freedom from jostle of St. James’ Street and Pall Mall. Those fools who had broken away from Mrs. Cyril’s like fragments from an exploding shell might think these two would feel as they did the need for hurry. Charlie Terrard knew perfectly well there was none, so far as he and the great John K. were concerned. Touaregs were stagnant, and it wasn’t half a dozen wretched punters from among the smart that would reinstate them. Mrs. Cyril was not poor, but women don’t do such things on a large scale, and the largest of her scale would be insignificant compared with what he had in mind. As for the two ex-Lord Chancellors, they might potter about with their few pounds and be damned. Marjorie Kayle was a matter of shillings, and she would have to borrow those. They might make their little profits. He didn’t grudge them. It wasn’t things of that sort that affected a market. It was something very different; it was a mighty rumor, and the confirmation of that rumor: that was what moved a stock. And Charlie Terrard now had the lever of that solidly between his hands.
Charlie Terrard was wrong; not in his judgment of the non-effect of Mrs. Cyril’s purchase and the rest in such a big market—that any fool could have judged. He was wrong in his judgment of the relative scales of their purchases. For of all those who were buying their little packets at that very moment over the wire while he sauntered at his ease southward and eastward with his millionaire, it was Marjorie Kayle who had plunged most deeply. She had stopped to telephone from the Tube station. But she had not telephoned to any broker. She had telephoned to something better than that; she had telephoned to Lord Ashington, and he would act for him and for her. But even his purchase was nothing at all to what was coming.