The truckle-bed creaked as Charlie shifted uneasily.  They caught a faint murmur of talk from the other room, and Sissie’s laugh.

“Lady Massulam happened to tell me once that you’d been selling something before you knew how much it would cost you to buy it.  Of course I don’t pretend to understand finance myself—­I’m only a civil servant on the shelf—­but to my limited intelligence such a process of putting the cart before the horse seemed likely to lead to trouble,” said Mr. Prohack, as it were ruminating.

“Oh!  She told you that, did she?” Charlie smiled.  “Well, the good lady was talking through her hat. That affair’s all right.  At least it would be if I could carry it through, but of course I can’t now.  It’ll go into the general mess.  If I was free, I wouldn’t sell it at all; I’d keep it; there’d be no end of money in it, and I was selling it too cheap.  It’s a combine, or rather it would have been a combine, of two of the best paper mills in the country, and if I’d got it, and could find time to manage it,—­my word, you’d see!  No!  What’s done me in is a pure and simple Stock Exchange gamble, my dear father.  Nothing but that!  R.R. shares.”

“R.R.  What’s that?”

“Dad!  Where have you been living these years?  Royal Rubber Corporation, of course.  They dropped to eighteen shillings, and they oughtn’t to have done.  I bought a whole big packet on the understanding that I should have a fortnight to fork out.  They were bound to go up again.  Hadn’t been so low for eleven years.  How could I have foreseen that old Sampler would go and commit suicide and make a panic?”

“I never read the financial news, except the quotations of my own little savings, and I’ve never heard of old Sampler,” said Mr. Prohack.

“Considering he was a front-page item for four days!” Charlie exclaimed, raising his voice, and then dropping it again.  And he related in a few biting phrases the recent history of the R.R.  “I wouldn’t have minded so much,” he went on.  “If your particular friend, Mr. Softly Bishop, wasn’t at the bottom of my purchase.  His name only appears for some of the shares, but I’ve got a pretty good idea that it’s he who’s selling all of them to yours truly.  He must have known something, and a rare fine thing he’d have made of the deal if I wasn’t going bust, because I’m sure now he was selling to me what he hadn’t got.”

Mr. Prohack’s whole demeanour changed at the mention of Mr. Bishop’s name.  His ridiculous snobbish pride reared itself up within him.  He simply could not bear the idea of Softly Bishop having anything ‘against’ a member of his family.  Sooner would the inconsistent fellow have allowed innocent widows and orphans to be ruined through Charlie’s plunging than that Softly Bishop should fail to realise a monstrous profit through the same agency.

“I’ll see you through, my lad,” said he, briefly, in an ordinary casual tone.