Maraton stood quite still upon the hearth-rug.  His face showed no emotion whatever.

“You are, I believe,” Mr. Beldeman went on, “only half an Englishman.  That is why I am hoping that you will behave like a reasonable being, and that my person may be saved from violence.  Upon your word rests the industrial future of this country for the next ten years.  If your forges burn out and your factories are emptied, it will mean an era of prosperity for my country, indescribable.  We are great trade rivals.  We need just the opening.  What we get we may not be able to hold altogether, when trade is once more good here, but that is of no consequence.  We shall have it for a year or two, and that year or two will mean a good many millions to us.”

Maraton’s eyes began to twinkle.

“The matter,” he remarked, “becomes clearer to me.  You are either the most ingenuous person I ever met, or the most subtle.  Tell me, is it a personal bribe you have brought?”

“It is not,” Mr. Beldeman replied.  “It did not occur to those in whose employment I am, or to me, to offer you a single sixpence.  I am here to offer you, if you send your people out on strike within the next week—­the coal strike, the railway strike, the ironfounders, the smelters, from the Clyde southwards—­one million pounds as a subscription to your strike funds.”

“You have it with you?” Maraton enquired, after a moment.

“I have four drafts for two hundred and fifty thousand pounds each, in my pocket-book at the present moment,” Mr. Beldeman declared.  “They are payable to your order.  You can accept my offer and pay them into your private banking account or the banking account of any one of your Trades’ Unions.  There is not the slightest doubt but that they will be met.”

“Are there any terms at all connected with this little subscription?”

“None,” Beldeman replied.

“And your object,” Maraton added, “is to benefit through our loss of trade?”

“Entirely,” Mr. Beldeman assented, without a quiver upon his face.

Maraton was silent for a moment.

“I do not see my way absolutely clear,” he announced, “to recommending a railway strike at the present moment.  If I acceded to all the others, what would your position be?  The railway strike is of little consequence to a foreign nation.  The coal strike, and the iron and steel works of Sheffield and Leeds closed—­that’s where English trade would suffer most, especially if the cotton people came out.”

Mr. Beldeman shook his head slowly.  “My conditions,” he said, “embrace the railways.”

“Somehow, I fancied that they would,” Maraton remarked.  “Tell me why?”

Beldeman rose slowly to his feet.

“Are you an Englishman?” he asked.

“I can’t deny it,” Maraton replied.  “I was born abroad.  Why are you so interested in my nationality?”

Beldeman shrugged his shoulders.