Mr Wilkins had laid his face in his hands, and groaned aloud, then looking up suddenly, said, “I did not certainly know that my dear boy was on board, but I had too good reason to suspect it, for he had been talking much of the vessel, and disappeared on the day she sailed, and now this message from—”
He rose hastily and put on his greatcoat.
“Excuse me, my dear sir,” urged Mr Black; “at such a time it may seem selfish to press you on business affairs, but this is a matter of life and death to me—”
“It is a matter of death to me,” interrupted the other in a low tone, “but I grant your request. My clerk will arrange it with you.”
He left the office abruptly, with a bowed head, and Mr Black having arranged matters to his satisfaction with the clerk, left it soon after, with a sigh of relief. He cared no more for Mr Wilkins’s grief than did the dirty clerk for his master’s troubles.
Returning to his dirty office, Mr Black then proceeded to do a stroke of very dingy business.
That morning, through some mysterious agency, he had learned that there were rumours of an unfavourable kind in reference to a certain bank in the city, which, for convenience, we shall name the Blankow Bank. Now, it so happened that Mr Black was intimately acquainted with one of the directors of that bank, in whom, as well as in the bank itself, he had the most implicit confidence. Mr Black happened to have a female relative in the city named Mrs Niven—the same Mrs Niven who had been landlady to Philosopher Jack. It was one of the root-principles of Mr Black’s business character that he should make hay while the sun shone. He knew that Mrs Niven owned stock in the Blankow Bank; he knew that the Bank paid its shareholders a very handsome dividend, and he was aware that, owing to the unfavourable rumours then current, the value of the stock would fall very considerably. That, therefore, was the time for knowing men like Mr Black, who believed in the soundness of the bank, to buy. Accordingly he wrote a letter to Mrs Niven, advising her to sell her shares, and offering to transact the business for her, but he omitted to mention that he meant to buy them up himself. He added a postscript on the back, telling of the loss of the Lively Poll.
Mrs Niven was a kind-hearted woman, as the reader knows; moreover, she was a trusting soul.
“Very kind o’ Maister Black,” she observed to Peggy, her maid-of-all-work, on reading the letter. “The Blankow Bank gi’es a high dividend, nae doot, but I’m well enough off, and hae nae need to risk my siller for the sake o’ a pund or twa mair income i’ the year. Fetch me the ink, Peggy.”
A letter was quickly written, in which worthy Mrs Niven agreed to her relative’s proposal, and thanked him for the interest he took in her affairs. Having despatched Peggy with it to the post, she re-read Mr Black’s epistle, and in doing so observed the postscript, which, being on the fourth page, had escaped her on the first perusal.