Terrard respected his partner’s judgment in High Finance now, as he had for so long in lesser things of the sort. But he had seen Petre’s face with his own eyes that evening; Petre’s bewildering appeal was still in his ears. He was confident there was something much deeper than so obvious a maneuver. Perhaps a man like Petre, one of the masters of the world, had heard of coming war; of plague. After all, it wasn’t the motive that counted, it was the incredible proposal itself. Mr. Petre was certainly determined to get rid of those shares.
His thoughts were interrupted by Charlbury’s strong, short phrase: “What’s the Commission?”
“There isn’t any,” answered Charlie as shortly.
Charlbury watched him narrowly. Then he spoke.
“Go to Trefusis,” he said. “Get him as soon as ever he can be got. Tell him it goes through now or never. Get his name to it to-night—and make him understand it’ll cost him £40,000 to Blake and Blake—eight per cent. is moderate, damn it, for throwing half a million at a man’s head without his having to move a finger for it. He’ll be 400,000 up ... till it leaks out,” and at that thought he grinned. “He knows you’ve got John K. in your pocket.” (Charlie had his doubts of that now.) “If you tell him it’s now or never he’ll believe you—but by God, he’s a fool if he bites!”
“And what about our shares?” said the other half of Blake and Blake. “As you say—when it leaks out—when any one ... knows that John K.’s crawled out, the mercury’ll go down. It’ll be a cold day for B.A.R.—Bars.”
“If the fool bites, we sell to-morrow morning. He’ll have his men out to buy. You may go to sleep on that. Ring me up at Walton Heath the moment you know.”
And the New Tavern Conference broke up.
Charlie Terrard had the Dæmon’s luck that evening. By half-past seven he had got to Trefusis, just back in his flat to dress. He had managed by something in his tone over the instrument to arrest him, and to make him put off the people he was going to. Before eight the two men were together, both standing; Charlie dreadfully moved and hoping that his face quite covered the throbbing of his blood; Trefusis looking him full and rather hardly in the face, with his brilliant dark eyes and raven beak, in the half light of the falling summer evening.