“Buy shares? Impossible! These are not the times ... I have no ready money.”
“Why the devil did you come here then?” Tord said brutally.
Dagmar went about tidying up with a fur coat on top of her chemise and her hair down:
“Yes, I suppose I’d better clear out at once,” whined Peter.
“All right, I will come in with you to talk to Stellan and Laura about the shares.”
Peter suddenly became very thoughtful. He sat down at a table and began to calculate in a small greasy notebook:
“I might try to renew that bill, and then I could perhaps help you,” he mumbled.
Tord had an instinctive feeling that his last proposal had been the best one, and that he ought to talk to his sisters and brother. But he did not stick to it, so incurably lazy was he.
“Well, what will you give?” he asked in a voice that was thick with excitement.
Peter writhed. He seemed quite in despair.
Tord thought it sounded too absurdly little compared with what he had received before.
Peter began again with an injured expression to pack his bag. And Tord asked Dagmar to bring out his town clothes.
“Sixty-five thousand,” Peter suddenly ejaculated.
“A hundred thousand!” Tord hissed through the gap in his teeth.
Then Peter felt a wild joy. But it was deep, deep-seated. Not a spark of it came to the surface. He took out his shapeless pocketbook and slowly counted out seventy-five notes of a thousand crowns each.
Tord suddenly closed. Such is the power of cash over weak minds. And of course he could not know that Peter had exactly the same amount in his other pocketbook.
But he had scarcely signed Peter’s paper and parted with his shares when he felt that he had been tricked.
“Clear out now, you cheat!” he shouted. “And don’t come near Järnö again, because if you do you will get a bullet in your head.”
And Peter quickly disappeared with the old gardener, who was to sail him over to the steamer. He calculated that he had earned about two hundred thousand on this stroke of business. But it had been too easy. He felt almost uncomfortable as he sat there huddled up on the lee side and looked out at the calm April day. Yes, there was something uncanny in a Selamb having such wretched ideas of business.
Tord did not go into town to put his seventy-five thousand in the bank. He kept them out at Järnö. No signing of papers, no hanging over a counter. The money must not link him to the town, the community.