The Profiteers | Page 8

recipient, you know. You have given me more happiness within this
last half-hour than I have had since we parted in France."
Some instinct of her younger days brought happiness into her laugh, a
provocative gleam into her soft eyes.

"You are very easily satisfied," she murmured.
He laughed back again, but though he opened his lips to speak, the
words remained unsaid. Something warned him that here was a woman
passing through something like a crisis in her life, and that a single
false step on his part might be fatal. He stood hat in hand and watched
the taxicab turn up Park Lane.
CHAPTER III
There was a little flutter of excitement in the offices of Messrs.
Kendrick, Stone, Morgan and Company when, at a few minutes after
eleven the following morning, Wingate descended from a taxicab,
pushed open the swing doors of the large general office and enquired
for Mr. Kendrick. Without a moment's delay he was shown into Roger
Kendrick's private room, but the little thrill caused by his entrance did
not at once pass away. It was like the visit of a general to Divisional
Headquarters. Action of some sort seemed to be in the air. Ideas of big
dealings already loomed large in the minds of the little army of clerks.
Telephones were handled longingly. Those of the firm who were
members of the Stock Exchange abandoned any work of a distracting
nature and held themselves ready for a prompt rush across the street.
Even Roger Kendrick, as he shook hands with his client, was conscious
of a little thrill of expectation. Wingate was a man who brought with
him almost a conscious sense of power. Carefully, but not overcarefully
dressed, muscular, with a frame like steel, eyes keen and bright,
carrying himself like a man who knows himself and his value, John
Wingate would have appeared a formidable adversary in any game in
which he chose to take a hand. Whatever his present intentions were,
however, he seemed in no hurry to declare himself. The two men spoke
for a few minutes on outside subjects. Wingate referred to the garden
party of the afternoon before, led the conversation with some skill
around to the subject of Josephine Dredlinton, and listened to what the
other man had to say.
"Every one is sorry for Lady Dredlinton," Kendrick pronounced. "Why

she married Dredlinton is one of the mysteries of the world. I suppose it
was the fatal mistake so many good women make--the reformer's
passion. Dredlinton's rotten to the core, though. No one could reform
him, could even influence him to good to any extent. He's such a wrong
'un, to tell you the truth, that I'm surprised Phipps put him on the Board.
His name is long past doing any one any good."
"Lady Dredlinton did not strike me as having altogether the air of an
unhappy woman," Wingate observed tentatively.
Kendrick shrugged his shoulders.
"No fundamentally good woman is ever unhappy," he said, "or rather
ever shows it. She is face to face all the time with the necessity of
making the best of things for the sake of other people. Lady Dredlinton
carries herself bravely, but the people who know her best never cease to
feel sorry for her."
"You have those figures I sent you a wireless for?" Wingate asked, a
little abruptly.
"I have them here," Kendrick replied, producing a little roll of papers
from a drawer. "They want a little digesting, even by a man with a head
for figures like yours. In some respects, these fellows seem to have had
the most amazing luck. Unless we come to an understanding with
Russia within the next month, of which there doesn't seem to me to be
the slightest prospect, we shall get no wheat from there for at least
another year."
"And the harvests all over eastern Europe were shocking," Wingate
said, half to himself.
"It doesn't seem to me," Kendrick pointed out, "that more than driblets
can be expected from anywhere, except, of course, the greatest source
of all, Canada and the United States."
"You've no indication of the Government's attitude, I suppose?"
Wingate asked.

"I don't suppose they have one," Kendrick answered, "upon that or any
other subject. Of course, if all the wheat that's being stored in the
country under the auspices of the B. & I. stood in their own name, the
matter would appear in a different light, but they've been infernally
clever with all these subsidiary companies. They own a majority of
shares in each, without a doubt, but they conduct their transactions as
though they were absolutely independent concerns."
Wingate studied the figures in the document he was holding for some
minutes in thoughtful silence. The telephone rang at Kendrick's elbow.
He picked up the