‘If you care to tell me.’

’Yes, I will, just to show you what one is driven to do.  Two years ago I was ill —­ congestion of the lungs —­ felt sure I should die.  You were in Wales then.  I sent for Tripcony, to get him to make my will —­ he used to be a solicitor, you know, before he started the bucket-shop.  When I pulled through, Trip came one day and said he had a job for me.  You’ll be careful, by-the-bye, not to mention this.  The job was to get the City editor of a certain newspaper (a man I know very well) to print a damaging rumour about a certain company.  You’ll wonder how I could manage this.  Well, simply because the son of the chairman of that company was a sort of friend of mine, and the City editor knew it.  If I could get the paragraph inserted, Tripcony would —­ not pay me anything, but give me a tip to buy certain stock which he guaranteed would be rising.  Well, I undertook the job, and I succeeded, and Trip was as good as his word.  I bought as much as I dared —­ through Trip, mind you, and he wouldn’t let me of the cover, which I thought suspicious, though it was only habit of business.  I bought at 75, and on settling day the quotation was par.  I wanted to go at it again, but Trip shook his head.  Well, I netted nearly five hundred.  The most caddish affair I ever was in; but I wanted money.  Stop, that’s only half the story.  Just at that time I met a man who wanted to start a proprietary club.  He had the lease of a house near Golden Square, but not quite money enough to furnish it properly and set the club going.  Well, I joined him, and put in four hundred pounds; and for a year and a half we didn’t do badly.  Then there was a smash; the police raided the place one night, and my partner went before the magistrates.  I trembled in my shoes, but my name was never mentioned.  It only ended in a fifty-pound fine, and of course I went halves.  Then we sold the club for two hundred, furniture and all, and I found myself with —­ what I have now, not quite three hundred.’

‘My boy, you’ve been going it,’ remarked Rolfe, with a clouded brow.

’That’s what I tell you.  I want to get out of all that kind of thing.  Now, how am I to get two or three hundred honestly?  I think Denbow would take less than he says for cash down.  But the stock, I guarantee, is worth two hundred.’

‘You have the first offer?’

‘Till day after tomorrow —­ Monday.’

’Tomorrow’s Sunday —­ that’s awkward.  Never mind.  If I come over in the morning, will you take me to the place, and let me look over it with you, and see both Denbow and the shopman?’

‘Of course I will!’ said Morphew delightedly.  ’It’s all aboveboard.  There’s a devilish good business to be made; it depends only on the man.  Why, Denbow has made as much as two hundred in a year out of printing for amateurs alone.  It’s his own fault that he didn’t keep it up.  I swear, Rolfe, that with capital and hard work and acuteness, that place can be made the establishment of the kind south of the Thames.  Why, there’s no reason why one shouldn’t net a thousand a year in a very short time.’