alising in his rough commonsense that there was no
need to drive ideas into Mr. Prohack's head with a steam-hammer, or to
intoxicate him with a heady vapour of superlatives.

In a quarter of an hour Mr. Prohack learnt that Sir Paul was promoting a
strictly private syndicate as a preliminary to the formation of a big
company for the exploitation of certain options on Roumanian
oil-territory which Sir Paul held. He learnt about the reports of the
trial borings. He learnt about the character and the experience of the
expert whom Sir Paul had sent forth to Roumania. He learnt about the
world-supply of oil and the world-demand for oil. He learnt about the
great rival oil-groups that were then dividing the universe of oil. He
had the entire situation clearly mapped on his brain. Next he obtained
some startling inside knowledge about the shortage of liquid capital in
the circles of "big money," and then followed Sir Paul's famous club
disquisition upon the origin of the present unsaleableness of securities
and the appalling uneasiness, not to say collapse, of markets.

"What we want is stability, old boy. We want to be left alone. We're
being governed to death. Social reform is all right. I believe in it,
but everything depends on the pace. Change there ought to be, but it
mustn't be like a transformation scene in a pantomime."

And so on.

Mr. Prohack was familiar with it all. He expected the culminating part
of the exposition. But Sir Paul curved off towards the navy and the need
of conserving in British hands a more than adequate gush of oil for the
navy. Mr. Prohack wished that Sir Paul could have left out the navy. And
then the Empire was reached. Mr. Prohack wished that Sir Paul could have
left out the Empire. Finally Sir Paul arrived at the point.

"I've realised all I can in reason and I'm eighty thousand short. Of
course I can get it, get it easily, but not without giving away a good
part of my show in quarters that I should prefer to keep quite in the
dark. I thought of you--you're clean outside all that sort of thing, and
also I know you'd lie low. You might make a hundred per cent; you might
make two hundred per cent. But I'll guarantee you this--you won't lose,
whatever happens. Of course your capital may not be liquid. You mayn't
be able to get at it. I don't know. But I thought it was just worth
mentioning to you, and so I said to myself I'd look in here on my way to
the City."

Sir Paul Spinner touting fo