“Monsieur Peronneau has been granted a loan of six hundred thousand francs from the government, but it cannot be obtained for three months yet; meanwhile our rival has acquired more than that sum from an English house, and if his factory is the first in operation it will steal all our old trade, and Monsieur Peronneau, who is already ruined, will have no opportunity to recoup. He is in frail health from the slavery of the invasion, and his heart will be broken. Three hundred thousand francs now will enable him to compete with his rival, for his factory is in far better condition, and for that he is willing to pay the entire sum which the government will lend him.
“I admit that I have tried to obtain the amount at a sacrifice less great, but there is no time for lengthy investigation, and I have found that people even in your generous America are afraid to trust my credentials and the sponsorship of our consul. Only a man of Monsieur Whitmarsh’s experience and caliber could comprehend that the affair is bona fide, that he takes no risk. Voyez, here is the personal letter which I have received from him.”
Storm glanced over the single sheet of terse, typed sentences ending in the well-known, crabbed signature, and returned it to the Frenchman.
“I congratulate you, Monsieur. I know Whitmarsh’s methods and this looks as if he intended to take you up on it.”
Monsieur du Chainat flushed with pleasure.
“It is of great happiness to me,” he said simply. “Almost I have despaired of my mission. At the Hotel Belterre, where I am staying, there are so many of my compatriots here also to try to borrow that they may rehabilitate themselves, and with so little success that I, too, feared failure. But Monsieur Whitmarsh is shrewd; he knows—what you say?—‘a good thing,’ and he makes no mistakes.”
The conversation drifted into desultory topics and after a half hour Monsieur du Chainat took his leave, dragging the reluctant Millard with him. As for Storm, he sat long over his cooling coffee, and until far into the night he pondered the possibilities which this chance meeting opened before him. The difference between sixty thousand dollars and a hundred and twenty meant the difference between luxurious living and the petty economies which would try his soul; between independence for years of travel and care-free pleasure, and the necessity of knuckling down after a brief respite to uncongenial money-grubbing. It must be all right if Whitmarsh were going into it, and his letter left no room for doubt on that score.
If he, Storm, had only met the Frenchman first!
In the morning he tried to concentrate on the affairs of the Trust Company, but it was of no avail. The glittering opportunity aroused all his gambling instinct and seemed all the more alluring in that it was out of his reach. But was it? Perhaps Whitmarsh would fail, for some reason, to accept the proposition; not from lack of faith in its genuineness, for he must have looked into it with his usual caution before going so far in the negotiations; but he had been known to turn down deals of much greater magnitude at the last moment through sheer eccentricity.
If Du Chainat could offer bona fide securities and he himself could obtain a mortgage of ten thousand on the Greenlea house, he could add that to his capital and take the plunge.