In Lorentz Uthoug’s big house you had to pass through the hardware shop to get to his office, which lay behind. Peer knocked at the door, with a portfolio under his arm. Herr Uthoug had just lit the gas, and was on the point of sitting down at his American roll-top desk, when Peer entered. The grey-bearded head with the close thick hair turned towards him, darkened by the shadow from the green shade of the burner.
“You, is it?” said he. “Sit down. You’ve been to Christiania, I hear. And what are you busy with now?”
They sat down opposite each other. Peer explained, calmly and with confidence.
“And what does the thing amount to?” asked Uthoug, his face coming out of the shadow and looking at Peer in the full light.
“Two million four hundred thousand.”
The old man laid his hairy hands on the desk and rose to his feet, staring at the other and breathing deeply. The sum half-stunned him. Beside it he himself and his work seemed like dust in the balance. Where were all his plans and achievements now, his greatness, his position, his authority in the town? Compared with amounts like this, what were the paltry sums he had been used to handle?
“I—I didn’t quite catch—” he stammered. “Did you say two millions?”
“Yes. I daresay it seems a trifle to you,” said Peer. “Indeed, I’ve handled contracts myself that ran to fifty million francs.”
“What? How much did you say?” Uthoug began to move restlessly about the room. He clutched his hair, and gazed at Peer as if doubting whether he was quite sober.
At the same time he felt it would never do to let himself be so easily thrown off his balance. He tried to pull himself together.