, and that settles the new sum they have
to pay us in differences. It is for us to say what that price shall be.
We'll decide on that when the time comes. We most probably will just put
it up another ten shillings, and so take in just a simple 13,000 pounds.
It's best in the long run, I suppose, to go slow, with small rises like
that, in order not to frighten anybody. So Semple says, at any rate."

"But why not frighten them?" Louisa asked. "I thought you wanted to
frighten them. You were full of that idea a while ago."

He smiled genially. "I've learned some new wrinkles since then. We'll
frighten 'em stiff enough, before we're through with them. But at the
start we just go easy. If they got word that there was a 'corner,' there
would be a dead scare among the jobbers. They'd be afraid to sell or
name a price for Rubber Consols unless they had the shares in hand. And
there are other ways in which that would be a nuisance. Presently, of
course, we shall liberate some few shares, so that there may be some
actual dealings. Probably a certain number of the 5,000 which went to
the general public will come into the market too. But of course you see
that all such shares will simply go through one operation before they
come back to us. Some one of the fourteen men we are squeezing will
snap them up and bring them straight to Semple, to get free from the
fortnightly tax we are levying on them. In that way we shall eventually
let out say half of these fourteen 'shorts,' or perhaps more than half."

"What do you want to do that for?" The sister's grey eyes had caught a
metallic gleam, as if from the talk about gold. "Why let anybody out?
Why can't you go on taking their money for ever?"

Thorpe nodded complacently. "Yes--that's what I asked too. It seemed to
me the most natural thing, when you'd got 'em in the vise, to keep them
there. But when you come to reflect--you can't get more out of a man
than there is in him. If you press him too hard, he can always go
bankrupt--and then he's out of your reach altogether, and you lose
everything that you counted on making out of him. So, after a certain
point, each one of the fourteen men whom we're squeezing must be dealt
with on a different footing. We shall have to watch them all, and study
their resources, as tipsters watch horses in the paddock.

"You see, some of them can stand a loss of a hundred thousand pounds
better than others could lose ten thousand. All that we have to kn