“Yes, about those bills! We must renew for a few months, till my ventures begin to make me some return. A mere matter of form! I will pay the interest, of course, and you shall have back the old bills. Here, Collins,” cried Mr. Black, opening the door between the two offices, “run over the way and get me a pound’s worth of bill-stamps. Three shilling and two shilling—four of each. Look sharp now, and don’t be the whole day about it. While we are ‘melting,’ you might as well have a few hundreds, might you not, Dudley? You will want some money to carry you over till quarter-day, and there will be the expenses connected with moving, and so forth. How much?—say three! You know we can always get more, if you run short.”
“But supposing that you are unable to meet those bills?” ventured Arthur.
“Why, then, we must renew again,” answered Mr. Black, cheerily, “and renew, and renew, and renew till one or other of us comes into his fortune. We cannot be kept out of it for ever,” added Mr. Black, jocularly. There was no having this man; once afloat with him, no one need ever after expect to touch solid land—once launched in the same boat, and you had to obey Captain Black, who would have laughed while sending one of the crew to his death, and kept “up the steam” had his nearest friend been dying.
Spite of his good spirits, however, Arthur ventured to interrogate him concerning the marketable value of paid-up shares, as to which the promoter’s opinion was almost identical with that of Mr. Stewart.
“But they are available as security,” proceeded Mr. Black. “For instance, if you were pushed for money, you could get an advance upon them. They are much the same as Berrie Down, you understand, tangible property—something to show, if a creditor turns crusty, or discount rises too high. We shall, all of us, do very well yet; and I am glad you are coming to town. You will never care to go back to Hertfordshire afterwards, even when you are worth ten thousand a year. Here are the stamps; that is right. Now, Dudley, I must trouble you for a moment. Let us first see the amounts, however, of those we must renew;” and Mr. Black, pulling out his pocket-book, consulted various memoranda which it contained, all having reference to certain of the bills coming due as fast as the autumn peaches ripen.
“I may as well give you a cheque for three hundred,” said Mr. Black; “no need to be sending it down after you;” and Peter Black forthwith drew a cheque for three hundred pounds in favour of Arthur Dudley, Esquire, on order, which document he crossed, “Hertford and South Kemms’ Banking Company.”
Mr. Stewart would have known that he did this in order to give himself time to get some of Arthur’s acceptances discounted before the cheque came back to his bankers; but Squire Dudley, being less acquainted with business manœuvres than the great director, thought it was all in the ordinary course of affairs.
It did not occur to him either as singular that many of the bills he accepted should bear no drawer’s signature attached—an omission Mr. Stewart would at once have detected and challenged.
Truth was, Mr. Black and the two Crossenhams played into each other’s hands, thus: the Crossenhams would get a bill discounted at their bankers, the produce of which Black would then pay into his own bank. Then he would get a bill discounted, with Crossenhams’ name to it as drawer, and hand that amount over to Crossenhams. Thus, the bills went dancing about like shuttlecocks—they were paid away, they were discounted, they were given as security, and nobody but Mr. Black knew for what exact sum Arthur had made himself liable.
“Enough to puzzle Berrie Down,” said Mr. Black to himself, thoughtfully, as, after Arthur’s departure, he totted up the amounts attached to the memoranda of which mention has previously been made; “enough to puzzle Berrie Down, if the ‘Protector’ come to grief; but it shall not do that, not, at any rate, until I have had my penn’orths out of it.”