It was indeed! The Manager knew, as did all his world, the exceeding eccentricity of the millionaire, and dreaded to the last extremes of dread lest one chance word should lead to the sudden withdrawal of his favors.
“It is not for me to suggest it, Mr. Petre,” the voice went on, “but there is a large sum standing idle, Mr. Petre, a very large sum. And of course when this purchase goes through it will really be a very large sum indeed.... A much larger sum,” he added with a futility worthy of a better cause.
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre, catching a vague impression that there would undoubtedly be a very large sum indeed doing nothing, and in his name. His manner confirmed the impression that however large the sum it would pass through the same hands: and the Branch Bank was very pleased. It spoke and said:
“Government departments aren’t given to hurrying themselves, are they? Ha! Ha! But you must be glad they’ve made up their minds at last!”
Then Mr. Petre began to understand, though none too clearly. It seemed he had been saved again.
He saw the white beard wagging, he heard the voice continuing, in a new, persuasive tone:
“Ah, I don’t know, Mr. Petre, whether you have considered ...” and here the Manager pulled towards him a large publication with an elaborate cover, “whether you have considered the Magna Development Scheme? We think highly of it here, Mr. Petre. To tell you the full truth, the issue was made through us, and to be perfectly frank, we are ourselves engaged in the matter. I am not free to give you other names, but some of them are public property, Mr. Petre, public property. You will know them as well as I do. They are names to conjure with, Mr. Petre.”
He put on his spectacles, opened the elaborate cover, and looked over sundry pictures and curves, printed on that fine hand-made paper. He held the document so that Mr. Petre had a glimpse of photographs showing a beastly foreign land parched under a hellish sun, with blackamoors about. There was a map with rivers in blue, mostly dotted, and interrogation marks upon the everlasting hills. There was a portrait of a bounder in a pith helmet. It was revolting. The Manager was about to urge further arguments when there happened in Mr. Petre’s soul a surge of emotion for which he could not himself have accounted; perhaps it was his weariness and disgust with this successive business of blind actions. He might on a closer analysis have discovered that it had something to do with a new confidence born of the turn that this last blind action had taken. But I think it was more the effect of those photographs and of the pith helmet man. At any rate, that Ironic Spirit at work, to whom for a brief span the life of this distracted man had been given as a plaything, moved Mr. Petre’s mind to a pronouncement. He said with the same decision he had used a month before at Mrs. Cyril’s luncheon party, when first he had engaged upon that path which had led him so far:
“I won’t have anything to do with it.” He was surprised at his own abruptness.
The Manager looked up sharply. Mr. Petre was gazing into the fire, his face averted, and for half a second that face was inspected as closely as a face can be. The Manager decided that Mr. Petre was beyond him—and there the Manager was right.