f typewriters, the shouting and
bargaining of eager customers, the tinkle of telephones in the long
series of cubicles.

"Mr. Wingate is here to see you, sir," the young man announced.

"You can show him in," Peter Phipps directed.

CHAPTER XIV

Phipps received his visitor with a genial smile and outstretched hand.

"Delighted to see you, Mr. Wingate," he said heartily. "Take a chair,
please. I do not know whether you smoke in the mornings, but these
Cabanas," he added, opening the box, "are extraordinarily mild and I
think quite pleasant."

Wingate refused both the chair and the cigars and appeared not to notice
the outstretched hand.

"You will forgive my reminding you, Mr. Phipps," he remarked drily, "that
my visit this morning is not one of good-will. I should not be here at
all except for Lord Dredlinton's assurance that the business on which you
desired to see me has nothing whatever to do with the British and
Imperial Granaries."

"Nothing in the world, Mr. Wingate," was the prompt declaration. "We
would very much rather receive you here as a friend, but we will, if you
choose, respect your prejudices and come to the point at once."

"In one moment."

"You have something to say first?"

"I have," Wingate replied gravely. "I should not willingly have sought
you out. I do not, as a matter of fact, consider that any director of the
British and Imperial Granaries deserves even a word of warning. But since
I am here, I am going to offer it."

"Of warning?" Dredlinton muttered, glancing up nervously.

"Precisely," Wingate assented. "You, Mr. Phipps, and Lord Dredlinton,
and your fellow directors, have inaugurated and are carrying on a
business, or enterprise, whichever you choose to call it, founded upon
an utterly immoral and brutal basis. Your operations in the course of a
few months have raised to a ridiculous price the staple food of the
poorer classes, at a time when distress and suffering are already
amongst them. I have spent a considerable portion of my time since I
arrived in England studying this matter, and this is the conclusion at
which I have arrived."

"My dear Mr. Wingate, one moment," Phipps intervened. "The magnitude of
our operations in wheat has been immensely exaggerated. We are not
abnormally large holders. There are a dozen firms in the market, buying."

"Those dozen firms," was the swift reply, "are agents of yours."

"That is a statement which you cannot possibly sub