After he had been speaking to her without interruption for some minutes, Katty exclaimed: "Yes, I think I see now exactly what you mean! There certainly doesn't seem much risk attached to it—at any rate as regards the start off, as it were. But what made these French bankers pick you out, Godfrey? After all, they're doing you a very good turn."
"I don't exactly know why they picked me out, as you call it——" he spoke hesitatingly. "But during that year I spent in Paris I came across a great many of that sort of people. My father got me the best possible introductions."
The piece of paper on which he had jotted certain notes and calculations was a large piece of thin foreign notepaper covered with small handwriting in the diluted ink which some French business men use.
"Can you read French?" he asked doubtfully.
She answered rather sharply, "Yes, of course I can!" and held out her hand.
The letter, which bore a Paris address, and the date of a fortnight back, was from the French banking house of Zosean & Co. It explained at some length that a client of the bank, a wealthy South American of Portuguese extraction named Fernando Apra, had become possessed of an estate on the coast of Portugal to which was attached a gambling concession. The idea was to make the place a kind of Portuguese Monte Carlo, and the present possessor was very desirous that English capital and English brains should be put into the company. The returns promised were enormous, and there seemed to be little or no risk attached to the business—if it was run on the right lines.
"I have gone into the matter very thoroughly," said Godfrey Pavely, "and I have convinced myself that it's all right. This Fernando Apra already has a London office. I managed to see him there for a few minutes last week. His real headquarters are in Paris."
"And are you finding all the money?" asked Katty eagerly. "Will it be all your money and my thousand pounds, Godfrey? In that case I suppose we shall get all the profits?"
He smiled a little at woman's cupidity. "No," he said, "I haven't been able to find it all myself. But I've managed to get in a very good man. Some one with whom I've done business before, Katty."
"What's his name?" she asked inquisitively.