THE CHARM OF THE OLD WORLD ROMANCES – Premium 10 Book Collection. Robert BarrЧитать онлайн книгу.
and if not, we can easily get it, and settle up when we finish the business.'
'Well, you know I have no money to spare.'
'Oh, I know that well enough. Perhaps Longworth will see us through, for, as he says, this sort of thing can be spoilt by niggardliness. He has known, and so have I, many a business go to pieces because of false economy.'
'But it seems to me all this is needless expense. We only want to get a few moneyed men interested in our project, and if they are sensible men, they will look to the probability of getting a good dividend, not at fine offices.'
'Very well, John; you get the men, and I shall be satisfied. I am sure I am as anxious to do this cheaply as you are. If you think you can go out and interest a dozen or twenty-four men in the City, and persuade them to go in for our mine, I will cry "Halt!" on our part until you do it. Will you try that?'
Kenyon pondered for a few minutes, and then said: 'I suppose that would be rather a difficult thing to do.'
'Yes, that is the way it strikes me. I do not know to whom I could go. Longworth is a good man, and we have gone to him. Now it seems to me, having got his assistance, the least we can do, unless we are prepared to produce the men ourselves forthwith, is to act as he wishes.'
'Yes, I quite appreciate that, and I also grasp the fact that too close economy is not the best thing; but, on the other hand, George, how are we to perform our part with Longworth? His ideas of economy and yours may be vastly different. What is a mere trifle to him would bankrupt us!'
'I know that. Well, he is coming here this afternoon at three. Suppose you manage to be in then, and talk with him. Meanwhile, I will go over the papers and get them into tabulated form.'
'Very well; I shall be here at three o'clock.'
It will hardly be credited that a business man like John Kenyon spent most of the time between that hour and three o'clock trying to compose a business letter in answer to the business communication he had received that morning. Yet such was the astonishing fact, and it showed, perhaps more than anything else, how utterly unfit Mr. John Kenyon was to join in a commercial undertaking in a city of hard-headed people. At last, however, the letter was posted, and Kenyon hurried away to be in time for his three-o'clock appointment. He found Wentworth and young Mr. Longworth together, the latter looking more like a young man from the West End than a typical City business man. His monocle was in his eye, and it shone on Kenyon as he entered. It was evident something was troubling Wentworth, and it was equally evident that the something, whatever it was, was not troubling young Longworth.
'You are late, John,' was Wentworth's greeting.
'A little,' he answered. 'I was detained.'
There was silence for a few moments, and Wentworth appeared to be waiting for Longworth to speak. At last Longworth said:
'I have succeeded in getting very nice offices indeed, and I was telling Mr. Wentworth about them. You see, it is not very easy to engage offices in a good part of the City by the week. They do not care to let them in that way, because, while a weekly tenant is occupying them, somebody else, who wants them for a longer time, might have to be sent away.'
'Yes,' said Kenyon in a non-committal manner.
'Well, I have got just the offices we need, and have now set the men at putting gilt lettering on the windows. I have taken the offices in the name of "The Canadian Mica Mining Company, Limited," which I shall have on the plate-glass windows in a very short time. Now, Mr. Wentworth here seems to think the offices rather expensive. I have told him before what my ideas are in the matter of expense. Perhaps, before anything more is said on the subject, we ought to go and look at the rooms.'
'How much are they a week?' asked Kenyon.
Young Mr. Longworth did not answer, because at that moment his monocle fell out of its place and had to be adjusted again; but Wentworth jerked out the two words, 'Thirty pounds.'
'A week?' cried John.
'Yes,' said Longworth, after having succeeded in replacing the round bit of glass—'yes; Mr. Wentworth seems to think that is rather high, but I defy him to get as fine offices in the City for anything less in price. It is merely ten pounds a week for each of us. However, before you can judge of their dearness or cheapness, you must see them. If you ask me, I think they are a bargain.'
'Very well,' said Kenyon. 'Have you the time, George?'
Wentworth, without answering, shoved the papers into his desk and closed it. The three young men went out together, and after a short walk came to large plate-glass windows, where a man on a ladder was chalking the words 'The Canadian Mica Mining Company, Limited,' in a semicircle.
'You see,' said Longworth, 'this is one of the very best situations in the City. As I said before, I doubt if you could get anything like it for the price.'
They could not deny the excellence of the position, or that the plate-glass looked very imposing and the gilt letters exceedingly fine; but the cost of this running on perhaps for two or three months seemed to appal them.
'Come inside,' said young Longworth suavely; 'I am sure you will be pleased with the rooms we have. You see,' he said, entering and nodding to the carpenters who were at work there, 'this will be the front office, where the public is received. Here you have room for an accountant or two and your secretary. The back-room, which you see is also well lighted, is just the spot for our people to meet. We will get in a large long table here, and a number of chairs, and there we are—capital directors' room.'
'Does the thirty pounds a week include the furnishing of the place?' asked Kenyon.
'Oh, bless you, no! You surely couldn't expect that? We shall have to put in the furniture, of course.'
'And do you intend to put in desks and counter and everything of that sort here?'
'Of course. Beside that, we will get in a large safe. There is nothing like a ponderous safe, with the name of the company in gilt letters on it, for impressing the general public.'
'And how much is the furnishing of this place to cost?'
'Really, I don't know that. The men I have engaged will do it very reasonably. They have done work for me before. You don't get it done any cheaper by haggling about the price beforehand—I've found that out.'
'I do not see how we are to pay our share of all this,' said Kenyon.
'Nothing easier, my boy; I've arranged all that. I will pay them my third in cash when it is finished, and, they have agreed to wait three months for the remainder. By that time you will have sixty thousand pounds each, and a little bill like this will be nothing to you.'
Kenyon looked grave.
'It's a little like counting your chickens,' he said.
'Ah, they'll hatch all right,' laughed Longworth. And then his eyeglass dropped out.
CHAPTER XXIII.
It is never wise to despise an enemy, no matter how humble he may be. The mouse liberated the enmeshed lion. Jennie Brewster should have been thankful that circumstances, working in her favour, had rendered her account of the discoveries she made about the mines unnecessary. She was saved the bitterness of acknowledged defeat by the cable despatch that awaited her at Queenstown, telling her not to forward her information. The letter she received from the editor of the Argus later explained the cable message. The Argus had obtained from a different source what purported to be an account of the reports on the mines, and this had been published. If Jennie's contribution corroborated this article, it was unnecessary; if it contradicted what had been already published, then, of course, it was equally unavailable, for the Argus was a paper that never stultified itself by acknowledging an error. So the editor sent his correspondent a short cable message to save the expense of a long and costly despatch that would have been useless