It was now clear beyond doubt that Lars Larssen was playing a game of unparalleled audacity. He had somehow arranged to impersonate the "dead" Clifford Matheson, and was using the impersonation to float the Hudson Bay scheme on his own lines.
Rivière flushed with anger at the realization of how Lars Larssen was using his name.
But that was a trifle compared with the main issue. When he had fought Lars Larssen, it was not a mere petty squabble over a division of loot. The Hudson Bay scheme was no mere commercial machine for grinding out a ten per cent. profit. If successful, it meant an entire re-organization of the wheat traffic between Canada and Great Britain. It meant, in kernel, the control of Britain's bread-supply. It affected directly fifty millions of his fellow-countrymen.
For that reason Rivière had refused to lend his name to a scheme under which Lars Larssen would hold the reins of control. He knew the ruthlessness of the man and his overweening lust of power, which had passed the bounds of ordinary ambition and had become a Napoleonic egomania.
In refusing to act on the Board, Rivière had made an altruistic decision. But now the same problem confronted him again in a different guise. If he remained silent, the scheme would in all probability be floated in his name to a successful issue. If he remained silent, he would be betraying fifty millions of his fellow-countrymen.
He had thought to strike out from the whirlpool into peaceful waters, but the whirlpool was sucking him back.
Weighing duty against duty, he saw clearly that he must at once confront Larssen and crumple up his daring scheme. And so he wired to Elaine:
"An urgent affair calls me to London. Shall return to you at the earliest possible moment. Address, Avon Hotel, Lincoln's Inn Fields."