"That's right enough," Peckover assented with an air of endorsing from experience that profound truth.
Mr. Gage took out a coin and laid it on the table. "There's a sovereign," he said, tapping it impressively, while his companion eyed it covetously. "There it is. Coin of the realm. Value fixed and accepted all the world over, you'd say. Yet it's a strange thing, as society is constituted, that, according to the value to be got out of it, to one man it will be worth, say, five and thirty shillings, and to another about six and sixpence. You follow me?"
Mr. Peckover intimated by a knowing nod that not only did he follow the argument, but that, as a member of the aristocracy, he was prepared to back it by getting the enhanced value from the coin in question.
"The reason is," continued Mr. Gage, "that when you are what what's called an outsider you have to pay, and pay double and treble for everything. And when you've paid, and paid till you're sick of shelling out, you find you haven't got half what, if you'd only been 'class,' you'd have got gratis for nothing."
"That's so," Peckover assented dogmatically.
"The millionaire business has been overdone," Gage proceeded, warming feelingly as he got into the swing of his grievance. "Men like myself have been in too much of a hurry to buy up all the cake in the universe, consequently the price has gone up for it, and now, instead of a good substantial slice for a reasonable sum, we get only a few crumbs at famine prices."
"No doubt," Peckover agreed, getting impatient of the preamble and anxious to come to the gist of the offer.
"The fact is," Gage went on, hammering one fist on the other emphatically, "money by itself is a delusion and a daily eye-opener. Money with a title like yours is quite another pair of shoes. If you reckon its purchasing power, and that's what justifies its existence, the golden sovereign in a millionaire's pocket dwindles to the size of a threepenny bit, and in a peer's it expands to the size of this." He held up a dinner plate.
"Inconveniently bulky," observed Peckover with a grin.
"That's merely my illustration of the fact," said Gage severely, as deprecating cheap witticism in business discussions. "Anyhow, I am content to put up with the inconvenience. I want to have a good time. Fate has given me money with one hand and with the other prevents my getting value for it. I don't want to waste time in building up a social position for myself; I want one ready-made, now; when I can enjoy it. You want to have a good time, a better time than you'll get living on an empty title which means starving at Staplewick Towers. You're just the man I have been looking out for. When I heard of your being found in Australia, I determined to do business with you if I could catch you soon enough, before you got known."