"I'm completely in the dark."
"I'd like to meet him."
"Shall I send him on to Roehampton after he's seen me?"
Olive reflected that Rivière might not want to see her, in view of the way he had avoided her so far. She answered: "Ring me up on the 'phone when he's in your office. I'll speak to him over the wire."
"Right—I'll remember.... By the way, about the Hudson Bay company, did I tell you that the underwriting negotiations are going through fine? Inside a week we ought to be ready for flotation."
Larssen proceeded to enlarge on the subject, and the broken thread of Olive's avowal was not taken up again. They left the offices, and drove back to the Cabaret to rejoin Sir Francis.
CHAPTER XX
BEATEN TO EARTH
At eleven o'clock the next morning, the shipowner was at the horseshoe desk in his throne-room, fingering the snapshot of Rivière which Sylvester had secured at Nîmes. He had seen in it the picture of a man very like Clifford Matheson, but not for a moment had he thought of it as the portrait of the financier himself. The shaven lip, the scar across the forehead, the differences of hair and collar and tie and dress had combined to make a thorough disguise.
Yet when the visitor entered by the farther door of the throne-room and came striding resolutely down the thirty yards of carpet, Lars Larssen knew him. The carriage and walk were Matheson's.