“Wheat’s going up because they’re buying,” was the dry comment.  “Directly they leave off it will drop, and when it begins to drop, look out for a slump in B. & I.’s.”

The young man relapsed into a seat by Sarah’s side and swung an immaculately trousered leg.

“But look here, Maurice, my boy, why should they leave off buying, eh?” he enquired.

“Because,” the other explained, “there is a little more wheat in the world than the B. & I. have money for.”

“I can give you a further reason,” Kendrick intervened, “for leaving B. & I.’s severely alone.  There is at the present moment on his way to this country—–­if he is not already here, by the by—­one of the shrewdest and finest speculators in the world, who is coming over on purpose to do what up to now our own men seem to have funked—­fight the B. & I. tooth and nail.”

“Who’s that, Ken?” Maurice White asked with interest.  “Why haven’t I heard about him before?”

“Because,” Kendrick replied, “he wrote and told me that he was coming and marked his letter ‘Private,’ so I thought that I had better keep it to myself.  His boat was due in Liverpool several days ago, though, so I suppose that any one who is interested knows all about his coming by this time.”

“But his name?” Sarah demanded.  “Why don’t you tell us his name and all about him?  I love American millionaires who do things in Wall Street and fight with billions.  If he’s really nice, he may take me off your hands, Jimmy.”

“I’d like to see him try,” that young man growled, with unexpected fierceness.

“Well, his name is John Philip Wingate,” Kendrick told them.  “He started life, I believe, as a journalist.  Then he inherited a fortune and made another one on Wall Street, where I imagine he came across Dreadnought Phipps.  What happened I don’t exactly know,” he went on ruminatively.  “Phipps couldn’t have squeezed him, or we should have heard about it, but somehow or other the two got at loggerheads, for it’s common knowledge amongst their business connections—­I don’t know that they have any friends—­that Wingate has sworn to break Phipps.  There will be quite a commotion in the City when it gets about that Wingate is here or on his way over.”

“It’s almost like a romance,” Sarah declared, as she took the ice which her cavalier had brought her and settled down once more in her chair.  “Tell me more about Mr. Wingate, please.  Mr. Phipps I know, of course, and he doesn’t seem in the least terrifying.  Is Mr. Wingate like that or is he a dourer type?”

“John Wingate,” Kendrick said reflectively, “is a much younger man than Phipps—–­I should say that he wasn’t more than thirty-five—­and much better-looking.  I must say that in a struggle I shouldn’t know which to back.  Wingate has sentiment and Phipps has none; conscience of which Phipps hasn’t a shred, and a sense of honour with which Phipps was certainly never troubled.  These points are all against him in a market duel, but on the other hand he has a bigger outlook than Phipps, he has nerves of steel and the grit of a hero.  Did I tell you, by the by, that he went into the war as a private and came out a brigadier?”