The Profiteers | Page 4

"I can tell you plenty," she answered, "which I should advise you to
stay away from. It is quite easy to see, Mr. Wingate, that you have been
away from London quite a long time. You are not in the least in touch
with us. On the Stock Exchange they do little, nowadays, I am told, but
invent stories which the members can tell only to other men's wives,
and up in the west we do little else except talk finance. The money we
used to lose at auction bridge now all goes to our brokers. We worry
the lives out of our men friends by continually craving for tips."
"Dear me," Wingate remarked, "I had no idea things were as bad as
that."
"Now what," Sarah asked ingratiatingly, "is your honest opinion about
British and Imperial Granaries?"
"If I gave it to you," Wingate replied, "my opinion would be the only
honest thing about it."
"Then couldn't one do some good by selling a bear of them?" she
enquired sagely.
"You would do yourself and every one else more good by not dealing
in them at all," Wingate advised. "The whole thing is a terrible
gamble."
"When did you arrive?" Kendrick enquired. "Have you been in the City
yet?"
Wingate shook his head.
"I have spent the last two days in the north of England," he replied. "I
was rather interested in having a glance at conditions there. I only
arrived in London last night."

"But this morning?" Sarah asked him. "You don't mean to tell me that
you had strength of mind enough to keep away from the City?"
"I certainly do. I did not even telephone to my brokers. Kendrick here
knows that, for he is one of the firm."
"Then what did you do?" Sarah persisted, "I can't imagine you spending
your first morning in idleness."
"You might have called it idleness; I didn't," he answered, smiling. "I
had my hair cut and my nails manicured; I was measured for four new
suits of clothes, a certain number of shirts, and I bought some other
indispensable trifles."
"Dear me," Sarah murmured, "you aren't at all the sort of man I thought
you were!"
"Why not?"
"You don't seem energetic. I should have thought, even if you weren't
supposed to buy or sell, that you would have been all round the markets,
enquiring about B. & I.'s this morning."
"I read the papers instead," he replied. "One can learn a good deal from
the papers."
"You will find rather a partial Press where B. & I.'s are concerned,"
Kendrick observed.
"I have already noticed it," was the brief reply. "Still, even the Press
must live, I suppose."
"Cynic!" Sarah murmured.
"Might one ask, without being impertinent," Maurice White enquired,
addressing Wingate for the first time, "what is your real opinion
concerning the directors of the B. & I.?"
Wingate answered him deliberately.

"I am scarcely a fair person to ask," he said, "because Peter Phipps is a
personal enemy of mine. However, since you have asked the question, I
should say that Phipps is utterly unscrupulous and possesses every
qualification of a blackguard. Rees, his nephew, is completely under
his thumb, occupying just the position he might be supposed to hold.
Skinflint Martin ought to have died in penal servitude years ago, and as
for Dredlinton--"
Wingate was quick to scent disaster. He broke off abruptly in his
sentence just as a tall, pale, beautifully gowned woman who had
detached herself from a group close at hand turned towards them.
"It is Lady Dredlinton," Kendrick whispered in his ear.
"Then I will only say," Wingate concluded, "that Lord Dredlinton's
commercial record scarcely entitles him to a seat on the Board of any
progressive company."
CHAPTER II
Josephine Dredlinton, with a smile which gave to her face a singularly
sweet expression, deprecated the disturbance which her coming had
caused amongst the little company. The four men had risen to their feet.
Kendrick was holding a chair for her. She apparently knew every one
intimately except Wingate, and Sarah hastened to present him.
"Mr. Wingate--the Countess of Dredlinton," she said. "Mr. Wingate has
just arrived from New York, Josephine, and he wants to know which
are the newest plays worth seeing and the latest mode in men's ties."
A somewhat curious few seconds followed upon Sarah's few words of
introduction. Wingate stood drawn to his fullest height, having the air
of a man who, on the point of making his little conventional movement
and speech, has felt the influence of some emotion in itself almost
paralysing. His eyes searched the face of the woman before whom he
stood, almost eagerly, as though he were conjuring up to himself
pictures of her in some former state and trying to reconcile them with