“Much regret to tell you that poor Charles has been found dead. Very distressed.—Lady Hornton.”
His partner was dead! Upon his table lay a letter he had received by the last post that evening. A letter of apology it was. On the previous night at eight o’clock the two partners had met alone in Lombard Street, and Sir Charles had confessed that he had been gambling heavily in Paris, at Deauville, at Aix, at Madeira, at the Jockey Club, at Buenos Ayres, as well as at a private gambling-hell called Evans’ in West Kensington, and that the result had been that he had lost everything. He could not face the music.
So he had made his bow to the world and ended his life. Purcell Sandys was left to bear the brunt of the whole of the gigantic liabilities of them both!
The great financier left the little glass of brandy untouched. He was never addicted to spirits. A man of strong and outstanding personality, he had studied, as so many of our greatest Englishmen have done, the practically unknown philosophy of Yogi—that science of “I am”—of the “Great Ego,” which by our modern world is so little understood.
Purcell Sandys, at that moment when he knew that ruin had befallen him, stood erect, and presently a curious smile crossed his lips. He had studied the old Indian science of “Raja Yogi” thoroughly and well. He knew the nature of Real Self, as every strong man does. He knew the power of the Will, which power underlies the entire teachings of Raja Yogi, and he was master of his Real Self. The great strong men through all the ages have studied the Yogi science perhaps unconsciously. Even as Purcell Sandys stood there, a ruined man in that millionaire’s palace in Park Lane, he spoke aloud and repeated the mantrams or affirmations of the candidates presenting themselves to the Yogi masters for their first lesson.
“I am a Centre,” he said in a low, distinct voice. “Around me revolves the world. ‘I’ am a Centre of Influence and Power. ‘I’ am a Centre of Thought and Consciousness. ‘I’ am independent of the Body. ‘I’ am Immortal and cannot be destroyed. ‘I’ am Invincible and cannot be injured. Mastery is with me.”
Then he returned to his chair and fell to studying and adding up his liabilities. They were colossal. He had known that Hornton was very fond of games of chance and often played for high stakes at a certain gaming-club in Paris, but he had never dreamed he was gambling away the firm’s securities. The blow had staggered him, for it had brought him in a day from luxury to ruin. The financial operations they had in progress throughout the world were now simply bubbles. There was nothing behind them. The Paris house had been depleted, and yet so high was the standing of the firm that nobody had expected such a crisis.
The failure would inevitably bring down with it other smaller houses, and hundreds of small investors, war widows, clergymen, artisans, and people who earned weekly wages, both in England and in France, would lose their all.
He bit his lip to the blood. An hour before he had spoken on the telephone to Lady Hornton, but the line was very bad to Stowmarket, and he could scarcely hear her. But he understood her to say that her husband, who had been out motoring in the morning, had lunched and then, as usual, gone to his room to have a nap. But when his man went to call him at half-past five he found him dead.
Such news was, indeed, calculated to upset any man. But Purcell Sandys, on account of his Yogi knowledge, knew of his own subconscious mentality. He relaxed every muscle, he took the tension from every nerve, threw aside all mental strain, and waited for a few moments. Then he placed his position firmly and fixedly before his mental vision by means of concentration. Afterwards he murmured to his subconscious mentality—which all of us possess if we know how to use it aright: