Y Jove! I believe it could be done!"
Mr. Rodney Railton took the cigarette out of his mouth and sent a puff of smoke into the air.
"I believe it could, by Jove!"
Another puff of smoke.
"I'll write to Mac."
He drew a sheet of paper towards him and penned the following:—
This he addressed "Alexander Macmathers, Esq., 27, Campden Hill Mansions." As he went downstairs he gave the note to the commissionaire, with instructions that it should be delivered at once by hand.
That night Mr. Railton dined with Mr. Macmathers. The party consisted of three, the two gentlemen and a lady—Mrs. Macmathers, in fact. Mr. Macmathers was an American—a Southerner—rather tall and weedy, with a heavy, drooping moustache, like his hair, raven black. He was not talkative. His demeanour gave a wrong impression of the man—the impression that he was not a man of action. As a matter of fact, he was a man of action before all things else. He was not rich, as riches go, but certainly he was not poor. His temperament was cosmopolitan, and his profession Jack-of-all-trades. Wherever there was money to be made, he was there. Sometimes, it must be confessed, he was there, too, when there was money to be lost. His wife was English—keen and clever. Her chief weakness was that she would persist in looking on existence as a gigantic lark. When she was most serious she regarded life least au sérieux.
Mr. Railton, who had invited himself to dinner, was a hybrid—German mother, English father. He was quite a young man—say thirty. His host was perhaps ten, his hostess five years older than himself. He was a stockjobber—ostensibly in the Erie market. All that he had he had made, for he had, as a boy, found himself the situation of a clerk. But his clerkly days were long since gone. No one anything like his age had a better reputation in the House; it was stated by those who had best reason to know that he had never once been left, and few had a larger credit. Lately he had wandered outside his markets to indulge in little operations in what he called La Haute Finance. In these Mr. Macmathers had been his partner more than once, and in him he had found just the man he wished to find.
When they had finished dinner, the lady withdrew, and the gentlemen were left alone.
"Well," observed Mr. Macmathers, "what's going to make my hair stand up?"
Mr. Railton stroked his chin as he leaned both his elbows on the board.
"Of course, Mac, I can depend on you. I'm just giving myself away. It's no good my asking you to observe strict confidence, for, if you won't come in, from the mere fact of your knowing it the thing's just busted up, that's all."
"Sounds like a mystery-of-blood-to-thee-I'11-now-unfold sort of thing."
"I don't know about mystery, but there'll be plenty of blood."
Mr. Railton stopped short and looked at his friend.
"Blood, eh? I say, Rodney, think before you speak."
"I have thought. I thought I'd play the game alone. But it's too big a game for one."
"Well, if you have thought, out with it, or be silent evermore."
"You know Plumline, the dramatist?"
"I know he's an ass."
"Ass or no ass, it's from him I got the idea."
"Good Heavens! No wonder it smells of blood."
"He's got an idea for a new play, and he came to me to get some local colouring. I'll just tell you the plot—he was obliged to tell it me, or I couldn't have given him the help he wanted."
"Is it essential? I have enough of Plumline's plots when I see them on the stage."
"It is essential. You will see."
Mr. Railton got up, lighted a cigar, and stood before the fireplace. When he had brought the cigar into good going order he unfolded Mr. Plumline's plot.
"I'm not going to bore you. I'm just going to touch upon that part which gave me my idea. There's a girl who dreams of boundless wealth—a clever girl, you understand."
"Girls who dream of boundless wealth sometimes are clever," murmured his friend. Perhaps he had his wife in his mind's eye.
"She is wooed and won by a financier. Not wooed and won by a tale of love, but by the exposition of an idea."
"That's rather new—for Plumline."
"The financier has an idea for obtaining the boundless wealth of which she only dreams."
"And the idea?"
"Is the bringing about of a war between France and Germany."
"Great snakes!" The cigarette dropped from between Mr. Macmather's lips. He carefully picked it up again. "That's not a bad idea—for Plumline."
"It's my idea as well. In the play it fails. The financier comes to grief. I shouldn't fail. There's just that difference."
Mr. Macmathers regarded his friend in silence before he spoke again.