There sat Henry Trefusis and Cassleton on one side of the table in the bare, vulgar office, and there sat Mr. Petre and Terrard on the other; Mr. Petre strained and ill at ease.
Mr. Petre said very little and said it oddly, as though by rote. Cassleton and Trefusis noted that manner, and agreed silently that our greatest men are the hardest to comprehend. Charlie Terrard did most of the explanation and all the firmness in the intervals of his principal’s silence. Terrard it was who laid down detail and clause, negotiated, insisted, yielded when he chose to yield. All Mr. Petre did was to nod and, now and then, in monosyllables, to agree. But Trefusis, fighting a losing battle, could see well enough which was master and which was man. He divined the reality behind the mask. Petre was the soul, Terrard the mere mouthpiece. Petre was the Captain of that day.... How marvelously did that great man affect tedium! How admirably assumed was the recurrent spasm of disgust when his eyes met Henry Trefusis’ eyes!
It took less than two hours. And at the end of it there existed in duplicate a document not fifty lines long which left Charlie Terrard assured that Mr. Petre would stand as an equal God and twin master of B.A.R.
The victors went out. Henry Trefusis sat silent. Cassleton spoke to him, and could hardly get replies. At last the young man left in his turn, and the financier sat alone, not writing, not moving, pondering hour by hour.
He rang for wine and food; dismissed it; told the porter he should remain to work and that he was in to no one.
The long summer evening, benign, beneficent, went by. From the narrow court below came the shouts of children playing. The light drooped. It was almost dark before this man had concluded what is of import to such men.
A fool would have said that he and his politician brother had lost half their prospect of loot in the decision of the morning. But the Trefusis sort in our declining state are not fools in that sense.
One scheme was wrecked? He would build a vaster one—with the rumor of John K. Petre behind him. He had designed to leave apart the Tide Power Basins and to ruin them. Now, with this name behind him, he would change his plan. He would buy up and Rotorize them. He would catch the fool public with debentures: they should buy the tides for him and yet leave him master, and at the same time provide a wide support for his raid upon the wealth of England. He would rotorize Central Lighting in the towns. He would more than double the haul in which he had sacrificed half his share. He had lost a battle. He would win the campaign.
It was dark when his long thought was concluded. He went out into the warm night.