“Well, I’m blowed,” said Mr. Rice, when the vendor and his agent had in turn gone away. “She is a card, and no mistake. But confound her arithmetic. Here, give me a drop more whisky. I don’t know whether I’m on my head or my heels.”
“That’s always the outcome, with a woman,” said Mr. Gann sadly.
“Look here,” said old Cairns enthusiastically. “You stick it through with her. For, take it from me—although I was staggered a moment—she’s done a big thing, and she’s right. It’ll turn up trumps.” And Mr. Cairns began to laugh and cough at the same time. “What gets me,” he spluttered, “is the comic side of it. All our faces, when she said—firm offer! Didn’t I tell you she had grit? Listen half a minute. As an example—in strict confidence—a thing she did when she was quite a girl!” And, splutteringly, he narrated how once when Miss Verinder was travelling with a friend in foreign parts, they were captured and set upon by bravos; “and just as it seemed they were going to be down and out, she whips in with a revolver and—”
At this moment Miss Verinder herself interrupted the narration by reappearing at the door.
“Captain Cairns, can I have one word with you?”
Outside in the corridor she spoke to him tremulously. She was very pale, and she betrayed a nervousness and agitation strangely out of character with the melodramatic heroine of the Captain’s interrupted tale.
“Oh, Captain Cairns, do you think”—and after hesitating she used a phrase that on several occasions he had used himself—“do you think I have bitten off more than I can chew?”
“No,” said Mr. Cairns stoutly. “You’ve done a good morning’s work, and I, well, I’m proud of you.”
The venture turned up trumps. After three months of painful hope and fear they sold Marian II. and got back all their money. Then four months later they sold the last ship and wound up the modest syndicate with a profit of fifty thousand pounds. Meanwhile, operating alone, Miss Verinder had bought and sold two larger vessels and thereby gained nearly seventy thousand pounds. Then she bought ordinary shares in shipping companies, received fabulous dividends, and got out again. Then, as a last flutter, returning to an old fancy, she did something really big in oil. And then, literally and metaphorically, she folded her hands.