a certain truly British vulgarity.  One felt that here was a hail-fellow—­well-met man who liked lunch and dinner, went to Scarborough for his summer holidays, sat on his wife, took his daughters out in a boat and was never sick.  One felt that he went to church every Sunday morning, looked upwards as he moved through life, disliked the unsuccessful, and expanded with his second glass of wine.  But then a clear look into his well-clothed face and red-brown eyes would give the feeling:  ‘There’s something fulvous here; he might be a bit too foxy.’  A third look brought the thought:  ‘He’s certainly a bully.’  He was not a large creditor of old Heythorp.  With interest on the original, he calculated his claim at three hundred pounds—­unredeemed shares in that old Ecuador mine.  But he had waited for his money eight years, and could never imagine how it came about that he had been induced to wait so long.  There had been, of course, for one who liked “big pots,” a certain glamour about the personality of old Heythorp, still a bit of a swell in shipping circles, and a bit of an aristocrat in Liverpool.  But during the last year Charles Ventnor had realised that the old chap’s star had definitely set—­when that happens, of course, there is no more glamour, and the time has come to get your money.  Weakness in oneself and others is despicable!  Besides, he had food for thought, and descending the stairs he chewed it:  He smelt a rat—­creatures for which both by nature and profession he had a nose.  Through Bob Pillin, on whom he sometimes dwelt in connection with his younger daughter, he knew that old Pillin and old Heythorp had been friends for thirty years and more.  That, to an astute mind, suggested something behind this sale.  The thought had already occurred to him when he read his copy of the report.  A commission would be a breach of trust, of course, but there were ways of doing things; the old chap was devilish hard pressed, and human nature was human nature!  His lawyerish mind habitually put two and two together.  The old fellow had deliberately appointed to meet his creditors again just after the general meeting which would decide the purchase—­had said he might do something for them then.  Had that no significance?

In these circumstances Charles Ventnor had come to the meeting with eyes wide open and mouth tight closed.  And he had watched.  It was certainly remarkable that such an old and feeble man, with no neck at all, who looked indeed as if he might go off with apoplexy any moment, should actually say that he “stood or fell” by this purchase, knowing that if he fell he would be a beggar.  Why should the old chap be so keen on getting it through?  It would do him personally no good, unless—­Exactly!  He had left the meeting, therefore, secretly confident that old Heythorp had got something out of this transaction which would enable him to make a substantial proposal to his creditors.  So that when the old man had