“Ah, I was afraid they would. Very well, Mr. Mackeller, take this commission from me, the first I have ever given in the city. I am more accustomed to gambling in my club, or at Monte Carlo, so I must depend on you to look after the details. Quietly but quickly select your twenty men; give them carte blanche, but make it a sure proviso that they each attack the stockbroker you direct them to, at exactly the same moment. Let there be no intercommunication if possible, and tell your twenty to buy everything in sight so far as the Red Shallows are concerned.”
“But, my lord, that may take a fortune, and the sellers will insist on immediate payment.”
“They will get it, Mr. Mackeller. I am naturally a plunger, and this game fascinates me, because I don’t understand it.”
“I think you understand it a great deal better than you pretend, my lord, but this may require half a million of money.”
“Very well. Get whatever papers ready that are necessary to protect you. I’ll place the money at your disposal, and we ought to have all the stock that’s for sale by ten minutes after twelve. Your son and I have been doing business on a ten-minutes’ basis, but in this case we’ll allow half an hour, and see what happens.”
The elder Mackeller looked sternly at this dapper young man of the bandbox, so beautiful, so neat, so debonair, so well-groomed, and the young man became so uncomfortable under the fierce scrutiny of those hawklike eyes, that his own drooped modestly like those of a girl, and with the thin, elegant glove which he held loosely in his right hand Stranleigh flicked an invisible particle of dust from his trouser leg.
One need not be deeply versed in human nature to understand the temptation which now assailed the gray-haired stockbroker. It was as if a fawn-colored dove had made an appeal to a bald eagle that had swooped down from its eyrie in the crags where its young lay starving. It was as if a bleating lamb, all alone, were making courteous suggestions to a hungry wolf. Here was reproduced the situation of which city men dream when they enjoy a good night. Here, into the den of a stockbroker had innocently walked a West-end clubman, a titled person, almost shamefully rich, concealing beneath the culture of the colleges an arrogance and an ignorance equally colossal. Here was a fowl to be plucked, and its feathers were not only abundant but of the most costly eiderdown nature, and here the astute Mackeller had the victim entirely to himself, with none to protect or interfere. The aged stockbroker, wise in the ways of the city, and yet but now entrapped by them, drew a long breath and heaved a deep sigh ere he spoke.
“Lord Stranleigh,” he said at last, with severity, “it is my duty to warn you that you are putting your foot into a quagmire which may be so bottomless that it will overwhelm you. No man can say what this syndicate has up its sleeve, and once you involve yourself, you may be drawn in and stripped of all your possessions, great as I am told they are. You have given a check for five thousand pounds to my boy, and you say it is because you believed in him. That expression touches my flinty heart. I believe in him, and this belief is about everything of value I retain in the world to-day. Now, if you wish to protect that five thousand, do it by giving him another five, or another. My boy is all I’ve got left. I’m fighting for him more than for myself. Now here are you, about his own age, yet completely inexperienced in financial trickery, so I cannot allow you to walk blindly into this financial turmoil.”
The young man looked up at the speaker, and his smile was singularly winning. The usual vacant expression of his countenance had given place to pleasurable animation.
“But you are experienced, Mr. Mackeller?”