“I wasn’t going to spoil your game, Fred, though that devil of a voice did speak such utterances. But I knew all along. I smelt a fake, so to speak. You a man of business? You the head of a great Colonial Enterprise? No, no; it was too thin, my brother—too thin. Not but what you looked the part—I will say that.”
“Upon my word, I thought it was going to come off. I got hold of a company promoter. He said he’s steered craft more crazy than mine into Port. Talked of a valuation: talked of assigning 50,000 shares to me as owner of the Colonial business——”
“Well, but, Fred, come to the facts; sooner or later the facts would have to be faced, you know. What was the Colonial business?”
“It was a going concern fast enough when I left it. Whether it’s going now I don’t know. A lovely shanty by the roadside, stocked with a large assortment of sardines, Day and Martin, tea, flour, and sugar. What more do you want? The thing I traded on was not the shanty, but the possible ‘development.’ ”
“The development of the shanty. Excellent!”
“The development, I say, out of this humble roadside beginning. I made great use of the humble beginning: I thought they would accept the first steps of the development. I proposed a vast company with stores all over Australia for the sale of everything. Barlow Brothers were to serve the Australian Continent. We were to have our sugar estates in the Mauritius: our coffee estates in Ceylon: our tea estates in Assam: our flour-mills everywhere: our vineyards in France and Germany——”
“I see—I see. Quite enough, Fred; the scheme does you great honour. So you went into the City with it.”
“I did. I’ve wasted buckets full of champagne over it, and whisky enough to float a first-class yacht. And what’s the result?”
“I see. And you’ve come to an end.”
“That is so. The very end. Look!” He pulled out his watch-chain. There was no watch at the end of it. “The watch has gone in,” he said. “The chain will go next. And there’s the hotel bill.”