Charles moved on, disgusted.  The man’s manners were atrocious.  Near the Bank we ran up against a most respectable jobber.

“Ah, Sir Charles,” he said; “you here?  Well, this is strange news, isn’t it?  For my part, I advise you not to take it too seriously.  Your stock will go down, of course, like lead this morning.  But it’ll rise to-morrow, mark my words, and fluctuate every hour till the discovery’s proved or disproved for certain.  There’s a fine time coming for operators, I feel sure.  Reports this way and that.  Rumours, rumours, rumours.  And nobody will know which way to believe till Sir Adolphus has tested it.”

We moved on towards the House.  Black care was seated on Sir Charles’s shoulders.  As we drew nearer and nearer, everybody was discussing the one fact of the moment.  The seal of secrecy had proved more potent than publication on the housetops.  Some people told us of the exciting news in confidential whispers; some proclaimed it aloud in vulgar exultation.  The general opinion was that Cloetedorps were doomed, and that the sooner a man cleared out the less was he likely to lose by it.

Charles strode on like a general; but it was a Napoleon brazening out his retreat from Moscow.  His mien was resolute.  He disappeared at last into the precincts of an office, waving me back, not to follow.  After a long consultation he came out and rejoined me.

All day long the City rang with Golcondas, Golcondas.  Everybody murmured, “Slump, slump in Golcondas.”  The brokers had more business to do than they could manage; though, to be sure, almost every one was a seller and no one a buyer.  But Charles stood firm as a rock, and so did his brokers.  “I don’t want to sell,” he said, doggedly.  “The whole thing is trumped up.  It’s a mere piece of jugglery.  For my own part, I believe Professor Schleiermacher is deceived, or else is deceiving us.  In another week the bubble will have burst, and prices will restore themselves.”  His brokers, Finglemores, had only one answer to all inquiries:  “Sir Charles has every confidence in the stability of Golcondas, and doesn’t wish to sell or to increase the panic.”

All the world said he was splendid, splendid!  There he stationed himself on ’Change like some granite stack against which the waves roll and break themselves in vain.  He took no notice of the slump, but ostentatiously bought up a few shares here and there so as to restore public confidence.

“I would buy more,” he said, freely, “and make my fortune; only, as I was one of those who happened to spend last night at Sir Adolphus’s, people might think I had helped to spread the rumour and produce the slump, in order to buy in at panic rates for my own advantage.  A chairman, like Caesar’s wife, should be above suspicion.  So I shall only buy up just enough, now and again, to let people see I, at least, have no doubt as to the firm future of Cloetedorps.”