Moreover, at Loosham, as at Paxton, there had been passed a unanimous resolution against the compulsory purchase of Locals.
It was a paragraph that meant nothing to the millions that had seen it that morning. It appeared in several papers as a piece of unimportant general news. It meant little more than nothing to the Directors of Amalgamated Rotors themselves, they had expected a few such meetings—but it inspired Mr. Charlbury with a Great Thought. He pushed his chair back from the lonely breakfast table, screwed his little pig’s eyes closely together and gave this Great Thought elbow-room within his mind.
A few more such meetings? Eh? A number of them? Eh? Then virtuous indignation in the Press. And if the Press were too frightened of the Trefusis brothers, why then the purchase of a great Daily, eh?
It would cost money. But there was a man available with limitless money. He was called John K. Petre.
He looked at his watch. He would soon be taking the train to his office.
Mr. Petre stood in the consciousness of Mr. Charlbury as does revelation in the consciousness of the new convert; as does the beloved in the consciousness of the new lover; as does the sunlight in the consciousness of a man cured suddenly of blindness; as does life in the consciousness of a man reprieved from immediate death. He was flooded with one supreme conviction: that in and by and through Mr. Petre all things were possible. Mr. Charlbury grunted to himself and took the train to town. During all the forty-seven minutes which it took the powerful new Rotor engines to cover the fifteen miles between Epsom and Victoria, his Great Thought threw branches and leaves and burgeoned amazingly.
When he reached his office he was annoyed to find that Charlie Terrard hadn’t yet turned up. He never did turn up before the middle of the morning; but to-day Mr. Charlbury, who was at business on the stroke of ten o’clock every day of his life (except Sundays and a month’s holiday at the seaside) felt an unusual irritation at so usual an absence. For the Great Thought needed Charlie Terrard, and it needed him at once.
When that young gentleman did come in he was not happy; he was even less happy than he usually was in the middle of the morning, for his night had been happier far; and Mr. Charlbury, watching him with some inward contempt, but remembering his mundane connections with some inward awe, wondered whether he were fit to receive the instructions—or let us say the proposals—which were to be his task.
But he did not wait long.
“Charlie,” he said, “you know that man Petre?” It was rather a redundant question, but Charlie nodded wearily.