“No, don’t, Mr. Bryany!” said Brindley.  “Don’t go to extremes!”

“Personally, I don’t mind looking at the Five Towns,” said Edward Henry.  “What of it?”

“Well, did you ever see such people for looking twice at a five-pound note?”

Edward Henry most certainly did not like this aspersion on his native district.  He gazed in silence at Mr. Bryany’s brassy and yet simple face, and did not like the face either.

And Mr. Bryany, beautifully unaware that he had failed in tact, continued:  “The Five Towns is the most English place I’ve ever seen, believe me!  Of course it has its good points, and England has her good points; but there’s no money stirring.  There’s no field for speculation on the spot, and as for outside investment, no Englishman will touch anything that really—­is—­good.”  He emphasized the last three words.

“What d’ye do yeself, Mr. Bryany?” inquired Dr Stirling.

“What do I do with my little bit?” cried Mr. Bryany.  “Oh!  I know what to do with my little bit.  I can get ten per cent in Seattle and twelve to fifteen in Calgary on my little bit; and security just as good as English railway stock—­and better!”

The theatre was darkened and the cinematograph began its restless twinkling.

Mr. Bryany went on offering to Edward Henry, in a suitably lowered voice, his views on the great questions of investment and speculation, and Edward Henry made cautious replies.

“And even when there is a good thing going at home,” Mr. Bryany said, in a wounded tone, “what Englishman’d look at it?”

“I would,” said Edward Henry with a blandness that was only skin-deep.  For all the time he was cogitating the question whether the presence of Dr Stirling in the audience ought or ought not to be regarded as providential.

“Now, I’ve got the option on a little affair in London,” said Mr. Bryany, while Edward Henry glanced quickly at him in the darkness.  “And can I get anybody to go into it?  I can’t.”

“What sort of a little affair?”

“Building a theatre in the West End.”

Even a less impassive man than Edward Henry would have started at the coincidence of this remark.  And Edward Henry started.  Twenty minutes ago he had been idly dreaming of theatrical speculation, and now he could almost see theatrical speculation shimmering before him in the pale shifting rays of the cinematograph that cut through the gloom of the mysterious auditorium.

“Oh!” And in this new interest he forgot the enigma of the ways of Providence.

“Of course, you know, I’m in the business,” said Mr. Bryany.  “I’m Seven Sachs’s manager.”  It was as if he owned and operated Mr. Seven Sachs.

“So I heard,” said Edward Henry, and then remarked with mischievous cordiality, “and I suppose these chaps told you I was the sort of man you were after.  And you got them to ask me in, eh, Mr. Bryany?”