Meantime, they drove back to London together in silence—silence broken only once.
"What are you doing, Kleinwort; why don't you speak?" asked Mr. Forde.
"I am thinking—thinking, my friend," was the reply.
"Then I wish to Heaven you would not think," said the unfortunate manager. "It is deucedly unpleasant, you know."
"You are so what you call droll," observed Mr. Kleinwort with cheerful calmness.
An Englishman must be artificially iced before he can ever hope to attain to a foreigner's degree of coolness.
CHAPTER II.
KLEINWORT AND CO. IN CONSULTATION.
Drowning men catch at straws. It is not the fault of the straws that they fail to save, and assuredly it is not the fault of the drowning men that they carry the straws to destruction with them.