"Stirring? No—nothing stirring but stagnation, as some fellow said in a play I saw the other night. Barlingford folks say your brother Philip has made a heap of money on the Stock Exchange; but if he has, he must have done a good deal more business before I came to him than he has done lately. I can't see how a man is to develop into a Rothschild out of an occasional two-and-sixpence per cent on the transfer of some old woman's savings from railway stock to consols; and that's about the only kind of business I've seen much of lately. Of course Phil Sheldon has got irons of his own in the fire; for he's an uncommonly deep card, you see, that brother of yours, and it isn't to be expected he'll tell me all he's up to. I know he's up to his eyebrows in companies, but I don't see how he's to make his fortune out of them, for limited liability now-a-days seems only another name for unlimited crash. However, I don't care. It pleased my governor to get me into Sheldon's office, and it suited my book to come to London; but if the author of my being thinks I'm going to addle my blessed brains with the decline and fall of the money market, he's a greater fool than I took him for—and that's saying a great deal."
And here Mr. Frederick Orcott lapsed into admiring contemplation of his boots, which were the chefs-d'oeuvre of a sporting bootmaker; boots that were of the ring, ringy, and of the corner, cornery.
"Ah," said George, "and Phil doesn't tell you much of his affairs, doesn't he? That's rather a bad sign, I should think. Looks as if he was rather down upon his luck, eh?"
"Well, there's no knowing, you see, with that sort of close fish. He may have made his book for a great haul, and may be keeping himself quiet till the event comes off. He may be laying on to something with all his might, you know, on safe information. But there's one thing I know he stands to lose by."
"What's that?"
"The Phoenician Loan. He speculated in the bonds when they began to go down; and I'm blessed if they haven't been dropping ever since, an eighth a day, as regular as the day comes round. He bought them for the March account, and has been paying contango since then, and holding on in hopes of a rise. I don't know whether the purchase was a large one, but I know he's been uncommonly savage about the drop. He bought on the strength of private information from the other side of the Channel. The Emperor was putting his own money into the Phoenician business, and it was the best game out, and so on. But he seems to have been made a fool of, for once in a way."
"The bonds may steady themselves."
"Yes, they may; but, on the other hand, they mayn't. There are the Stock Exchange lists, with Phoenicians ticked off by your brother's own pen. A steady drop, you see. 'Let me have a telegram if there's a sudden rise,' said Sheldon to me the day he left London; 'they'll go up with rush when they do move.' But they've been moving the other way ever since; and I think if he stayed away till doomsday it would be pretty much the same."
"Phoenicians are rising rapidly. Come back to town."
These were the words of the telegraphic despatch which shaped itself in George Sheldon's brain, as his brother's clerk revealed the secrets of his employer.