"My good sir, you seem to have put your foot into it very badly indeed. It looks as though you, and all those involved with you, will crash through the very thin ice you are skating upon. It looks to me an odds-on chance that you will all be drowned in the financial vortex beneath. I don't for the life of me see how a poor insignificant journalist like myself can be of any real service to you. So you need not worry about your 100,000 kroner or any other sum. What fragment of weight do you suppose that so great a personage as our Minister would attach to either my words or to my presence—to me, a stranger and an ordinary civilian?"
In a tense, hoarse voice he replied: "You forget you are English, an English journalist, representing the most powerful newspaper in London. Everyone is afraid of newspapers. They can uproot a throne. I know. I have lived in London. I have seen what a newspaper can do. You are cool. Your nerves are strong. You are a man of the world. You can state my case as it would be impossible for me to state it myself. Let the English Government buy my oil at its own price. I don't want an exorbitant profit. I will leave the negotiation to your absolute discretion. Prohibition would ruin me. You can save me if you will only try. I will willingly pay you any sum you like to name. If you stave off the threatened prohibition you will earn it ten times over. You may even save our country from war. I have not slept for nights. I cannot eat properly. Unless this strain on me is relieved I feel my brain will give way and I shall go mad, or I shall kill myself."
He sat down heavily upon a chair, and, burying his head in his hands, wept aloud.
Allowing a reasonable time for the unhappy merchant to settle down to a more even frame of mind, I placed my hand upon his shoulder, not unkindly, and said in a soft voice: "Well, I'm afraid I shall not carry much weight, and I don't want your money, but I will go and see him. One thing is quite certain. You can rest assured that England would never knowingly permit an injustice to be done; but if you're trading with the Germans, then of course you'll have to paddle your own canoe."
Further inquiries from the now subservient speculator elicited the existence of a contract made with German merchants by which a by-product of the oil passing through his hands in the ordinary course of business, amounting to about five per cent. of the whole, had to be delivered to them periodically for some few months to follow.
In due course I carried out the promise I had made, and as a result I conveyed certain proposals to the merchant, whereby that gentleman gave a written undertaking that not a barrel of his oil should be sold to Germany, directly or indirectly, excepting the by-product before referred to, which was considered a bagatelle, he receiving assurances that so long as his undertaking was faithfully carried out no steps would be taken without fair and reasonable notice to press for a prohibition of the particular oil in question.
To say that the gentleman most interested in this matter was effusive in his expressions of overwhelming gratitude would be a gross exaggeration of mild description. If permitted he would have fallen on my neck and almost drowned me in a flood of tears of relief and joy. He produced a pocket-book bulging with paper money and attempted to force a handful of notes for large amounts upon me, which I firmly and emphatically refused to accept. But I did agree to lunch with him, and the late dejected one ate what he described as his first decent meal for a prolonged period.
During the following week we occasionally met. The merchant was now all smiles and enjoying life consequent upon a successful venture and an undisturbed peace of mind. Prices continued to rise in his favour, and ten days later he declared himself a millionaire in Norwegian kroner. He vainly continued to press me every time we were alone to accept something substantial for the service rendered, whilst he was extravagant in his sentiments of eternal gratitude. He also proposed that I should abandon my journalistic career and accept a position as one of the foreign representatives of his firm, which offer I likewise politely declined. Then he hinted at the bestowal of a high Norwegian decoration, which made me smile still more.
Whether the unlimited ambitions of this wild speculator followed usual precedent and tumbled from the height of success to the abysmal depth of failure by reason of too oft-repeated temptations of Providence; whether, and if so, how the assurances given and the guarantee obtained were carried out, the ultimate turn of events, and how all these things developed, progressed and fructified, remain, as Rudyard Kipling says, another story.