“Quite probably. I mean to construe it. There are men who originate or discover great opportunities of industry—and they need capital to bring their plans to fruition—but capital can be approached only through envoys and will receive only ambassadors who can compel recognition. The man who can hope to be successfully accredited to the court of Big Money must possess uncommon attributes. Pinch-beck promoters and plausible charlatans have made cynics of our lords of wealth.”
“What would such a man accomplish,” inquired Spurrier, “aside from a sort of non-resident membership in the association of plutocrats?”
“He would,” declared Snowdon promptly, “help bridge the chasm between the world’s unfinanced achievers, and its unachieving finances.”
“That,” conceded the ex-soldier, “would be worth the doing.”
“John Law at twenty-one built a scheme of finance for Great Britain,” the engineer reminded him. “He could come into the presence of a king and in five minutes the king would urge him to stay. Force and presence can make such an ambassador, and those things are the veins of human ore I’ve assayed in you in paying quantities.”
Spurrier looked across at the strange companion whom chance had thrown across his path with a commotion of pulses which his face in no wise mirrored into outward expression. It had begun to occur to him that if a man is born for an adventurous life even the Articles of War cannot cancel his destiny.
“It would seem,” he suggested casually enough, “that this need of which you speak is for fellows, in 43 finance, who can carry the message to Garcia, as it were. Isn’t that it?”
“That’s it, and messengers to Garcia don’t tramp on each other’s heels. Yet I have spoken of only one phase of the career I’m outlining. It has another side to it as well, if one man is going to unite in himself the whole of the possibility.”
Snowdon broke off there a moment and seemed to be distracted by some thought of his own, but presently he began again.
“My hypothetical man would act largely as a free lance, knocking about the world on a sort of constantly renewed exploration. He would be the prospector hunting gold and the explorer searching for new continents of industrial development, only instead of being just the one or the other he would be a sort of sublimation. His job would sometimes call him into the wildernesses, but more often, I think, his discoveries would lie under the noses of crowds, passed by every day by clever folk who never saw them—clever folk who are not quite clever enough.”