Schomberg exploded.
“Three against one! Are you shy? Do you want me to give you a letter of introduction?”
“You ought to look at yourself in a glass,” Ricardo said quietly. “Dash me if you don't get a stroke of some kind presently. And this is the fellow who says women can do nothing! That one will do for you, unless you manage to forget her.”
“I wish I could,” Schomberg admitted earnestly. “And it's all the doing of that Swede. I don't get enough sleep, Mr. Ricardo. And then, to finish me off, you gentlemen turn up . . . as if I hadn't enough worry.”
“That's done you good,” suggested the secretary with ironic seriousness. “Takes your mind off that silly trouble. At your age too.”
He checked himself, as if in pity, and changing his tone:
“I would really like to oblige you while doing a stroke of business at the same time.”
“A good stroke,” insisted Schomberg, as if it were mechanically. In his simplicity he was not able to give up the idea which had entered his head. An idea must be driven out by another idea, and with Schomberg ideas were rare and therefore tenacious. “Minted gold,” he murmured with a sort of anguish.
Such an expressive combination of words was not without effect upon Ricardo. Both these men were amenable to the influence of verbal suggestions. The secretary of “plain Mr. Jones” sighed and murmured.
“Yes. But how is one to get at it?”