I now openly confess that I pretended a gaiety which I certainly did not feel, for after Raymond had told me that he had recognised Griesbach, a very strange thought had occurred to me. It was this. As we had entered the garden to approach the house, I felt certain that I had caught sight of the figure of a man crouching against one of the bushes in the shadow. At the time I had thought nothing of it, so eager was I to meet my friends. Yet now, in face of Ray's whispered words, I grew very suspicious. Why had that man been lurking there?
When the cloth had been cleared and dessert laid, the elder of the two servants placed upon the table before our host a big box of long crackers covered with dark green gelatine and embellished with gold paper.
"These are German bon-bons," remarked Griesbach, his grey eyes beaming through his spectacles. "I get them each Christmas from my home in Stuttgart."
The conversation had again turned upon the splendid investment about to be offered to the British public, whereupon I half suggested that I was ready to go into the affair myself. Griesbach jumped at the idea, just as I expected, and handed round the box of crackers. Each of us took one, in celebration of Christmas, and on their being pulled we discovered small but really acceptable articles of masculine jewellery within. My "surprise" was a pair of plain gold sleeve-links, worth fully three or four pounds, while Ray, with whom I pulled, received a nice turquoise scarf-pin, an incident which quite reassured him.
Our host refused to take one.
"No," he declared, "they are for you, my dear fellows—all for you."
So again the box was passed round, and four more crackers were taken. That time Ray's bon-bon contained a tiny gold match-box, while within mine I found a small charm in the form of a gold enamelled doll to hang upon one's watch-chain.
As Ray and I pulled my cracker, I had suddenly raised my eyes and caught sight of the expression upon the face of my friend Engler. It struck me as very curious. His sallow cheeks were pale, and his dark eyes seemed starting out of his head with excitement.
"Now, gentlemen," said our genial host, after he had passed the box for the third time, first to his two compatriots, who handed the remaining two bon-bons across the table to us, "you have each a final bon-bon. In one of them there will be found a twenty-mark piece—our German custom. I suggest, in order to mark this festive occasion, that whoever of you four obtains the coin shall receive, free of any obligation, five shares in our new syndicate."
"A most generous proposal!" declared my friend Engler, a sentiment with which we all agreed.