“We will not discuss my wife,” Gaunt interrupted him curtly. “About this meeting—I suppose that the papers will have a good deal to say in the morning.”
“Your intervention was certainly dramatic. You spoke splendidly and I believe that your heart was in what you said. It seems to me that you are a man who essentially loves a fight, and I sha’n’t be a bit surprised if you are just as eager to defeat the Belgians as I am. You wouldn’t have spoken as you did if you had been animated solely by your vow,” Drake said quietly.
“I wonder if you are right,” Gaunt remarked musingly. “I always have loved to overcome obstacles and the greater the odds, the keener I was. I believe there is some truth in your suggestion. You evidently know me better than I do myself.”
“I believe that there is more good in you than you will allow people to see. The apparent hardness has been a pose that you have produced so long that it has become almost second nature.”
“You flatter me, Drake. By the bye, I’ve something amusing to tell you. You remember the deal in Amantis with Weiss and his crowd. Well, it appears that although the wire was forged there has been a discovery of gold, and that the shares have gone up to two pounds. More than that, they’re well worth the money. Will you kindly tell me how I stand? First with reference to Weiss, and secondly with reference to the original sellers of the shares. I don’t mean how I stand from the strictly business, but from the moral point of view?” Gaunt asked grimly.
Drake laughed quietly to himself.
“Forgive me. I was only imagining Weiss’s state of mind. Has he written to you?” he asked.
“No, but he called when I was out. Do you suggest that I ought to pay him what his share would have been?”
“Certainly not, and I am speaking from the moral point of view. The man was engaged in perpetrating a barefaced swindle——”
“To which I was a party,” Gaunt interrupted him quietly.