The General Chemical Company on that Friday evening when Mr. Kleinwort was asked to bring his persuasive powers to bear on the recusant family at Homewood, chanced to be in precisely the state of a drowning man making frantic clutches at safety, and Mr. Forde's worst enemy might have pitied him had he understood all Mr. Mortomley's "going" meant to the manager of St. Vedast Wharf.
He had driven out to Homewood vowing that Mortomley, willing or unwilling, should not stop, and it was only when he found affairs had passed beyond his control, that he began to think whether there was no way out of the difficulty.
Like an inspiration the idea of keeping the whole thing quiet, of hoodwinking his directors, and of holding the ball still at his feet, occurred to him.
He had to do with fools, and he humoured them according to their folly, and indeed the notion of suggesting the substitution of the Company's solicitor for the solicitor of Mr. Mortomley amounted almost to a stroke of genius.
To Kleinwort there was a certain humour in the idea of first gibbeting a man as a rogue, and then treating him as a simpleton. It was a feat the German performed mentally every day, but then he kept the affair secret between himself and his brains. He did not possess the frankness of that "so droll Forde," and the tactics of his friend tickled him extremely.
And yet, truth to say, Mrs. Mortomley was not so supreme an idiot as the autocrat of St. Vedast's Wharf imagined.
She had her misgivings, which Rupert pooh-poohed, declaring that peace was well purchased at so small a price, and that for such a purpose one lawyer was quite as good as another.
"Still, I should like to speak to Archie's solicitor about it," she persisted.
"That is what you cannot do, for he is out of town," answered the young man; "and very fortunate that he is, for if you went to him and he went to Forde there would only be another row, and the whole affair perhaps knocked on the head again."