After that Petre could strike home.
Mr. Charlbury described the John K. Petre position in American Rotors. He described the plant and the huge works at Theocritus, Mich. He described the ignorance of these magnates on our venerable constitution, with its connection between public service and private enterprise. He described with holy glee the faces of Trefusis and his brother and young Cassleton, their skirmisher, hearing that the vast concern had thought of crossing the Atlantic; if necessary of starting a paper to take advantage of the growing grumble against the new licenses. He described the effect of fifty millions acting in opposition to the proposal for permanent Government contracts in the coming autumn. He described the salting of the smart women and the private secretaries and the News Agencies. He described the necessary haste of the Trefusis crowd to come down off the shelf, to take the robber to their arms, to arrange, to settle, to go fifty-fifty, to save their souls alive. He described how he and Charlie would come romping in for a touch on both deals—from the victor in his triumph, from the vanquished whom Charlie could save. More commissions. All good!
Young Mr. Cassleton, growing acquainted with the World of Affairs.
Oh! It was all good!
And Charlie Terrard saw a great light and was filled with the true doctrine and confirmed and primed for his mighty work. He set out.
As Charlie Terrard climbed up the old stone stairs to Mr. Petre’s rooms in the Temple his heart misgave him. He remembered the rebuff over Magnas, and though he didn’t understand the motive or the mood, he had noted that curious indifference which had spread over Mr. Petre’s mind like a veil as they went together over the figures of the Government purchase of the Paddenham Site. It’s all very well to be a millionaire, and an American millionaire at that, and a fantastic American millionaire into the bargain; but you weren’t going to tell Charlie Terrard that any living man was indifferent to something well over a million pounds.
No. It was some deep game! Something in the man which made him great, but which, to Terrard as to every one else, also made him inexplicable. He had to propose to-day a deal upon a scale quite out of the common—far above the humdrum of the Paddenham Site—and he dreaded a scene. Besides which, Mr. Petre seemed to him to have got odder and odder in all these last few months, imprisoning himself absurdly. It made the young man nervous to think of it. But he had to face that interview, and he faced it. After all, the worst that could happen would be a refusal—even if it were abrupt they could leave the matter and talk of other things.