“Ten percent of what you make,” said Marble uncompromisingly, “and, of course, I’m going to have a bit on, too.”
“How much?”
“Sixty quid.” Mr. Marble produced a roll of five-pound notes—the last of those he had been so careful about changing. He was throwing discretion to the winds now. If ever the notes were traced to him, it would be his own fault, but there was no time for complicated manoeuvres to change them.
Saunders took them half involuntarily.
“In fact,” said Mr. Marble, “I should like to have more than that on. Only I haven’t got it with me. I could raise it by tomorrow. But tomorrow will be too late.”
With those baleful eyes upon him, and the reassuring feel of those five-pound notes in his hand, Saunders could do nothing except make the inevitable offer.
“Thanks,” said Marble. “Look here, I tell you what we’ll do. Put four hundred in. Two hundred of that will be yours. There’s another sixty. Then you lend me the odd one-forty. That makes us just even.”
Saunders agreed helplessly.
“Time’s getting on,” said Mr. Marble, with a glance at the clock. “We’d better get a move on. I can tell you what to do all over again as we walk back.”
As though in a dream Saunders rose from the table and followed him out. The stimulus of the fresh air outside revived him sufficiently to remember to ask Marble how it was he was so certain that the franc was going to rise.
“I know all right,” said Marble casually. He could afford to be casual, so sure was he of himself, and above all, so sure was he of Saunders.
And Saunders weakly yielded to the man with the superior knowledge. He would have hooted with derision at a man who proposed to back a stray acquaintance’s favourite horse to the tune of two hundred pounds; he would have rolled on the ground with mirth if he heard that the same man was going to risk another one hundred and forty by backing that horse for his friend; but this was not horse-racing, about which he was thoroughly well informed. It was business—Big Business—and he was awed and submissive.
Marble ended his instructions just as they reached the main door of the National County Bank.
“Go in there and say you want to buy francs as a forward operation. They’ll send you along to my department, so don’t worry. I’ll be there. I may even do the business for you. But I expect it’ll be Henderson that you see. Oh, yes, and don’t forget, whatever you do, to ring me up two or three times today and tomorrow. Get through to Foreign Exchange and then ask for me. It doesn’t matter what you say. Just say—what is that you always say when you see anyone in the bar?—‘Hallo, old bean, how’s things?’ Keep it up for a bit; say ‘Doodle-oodle-oodle’ if you can’t think of anything else. That’s just to give me authority to move the account about when it’s necessary. Got it all? All right, then. Goodbye.”
Mr. Saunders, dazed and mazed, walked weakly into the National County Bank. Mr. Marble walked on to the side entrance where dwelt his own among other departments. The sweat was running off him in streams; for a brief space he had been a master of men; he had swayed a hardheaded man into doing something totally unexpected; he had gambled with fate and he had won; for a while he had known the wild exultation of success. He had done something that he would certainly not have done without the urgent impulse due to—a slight indiscretion one stormy night some months ago, but reaction closed upon him with terrible swiftness. His steps dragged as he came into the department of Foreign Exchange. He felt, and he looked, inexpressibly weary. The junior clerks nudged each other again as he walked by.
“Old Marble’s had as much as he can carry already. He’ll be getting the sack one of these days, just see if he doesn’t.”
And Marble, tired to death, weary with fear, worn out by the thumping of his heart, crept brokenly to his desk and buried his face in his hands.
V
Mr. Marble was paying. He was paying by the feeling of weary misery from which he suffered as he walked that day across London Bridge, as he stood exhausted in the train, and in the bus which brought him from the station, and as he sat in the back room at 53 Malcolm Road.
It was a new habit this of sitting in the tiny “drawing-room” instead of the dining-room. In the drawing-room the light was bad and the furnishing even more dreary than in the dining-room, while the fact that it was in the dining-room that during the winter they had their fire had habituated the family to passing all their time there. But Mr. Marble now sat in the drawing-room. He did little enough there. He read, it is true, in the books that he now chose regularly from the Free Library—crime books, even the interminable Lombroso—but he only read at intervals. Quite half the time he spent in looking out of the window across the barren flowerbed. That way he felt more comfortable. He did not have to worry then in case some stray dog from one of the neighbouring houses were there. Mr. Marble had read how dogs are employed to find truffles in Perigord, and he was afraid.
There were in addition various children from neighbouring houses who had been known to climb into the garden after balls which they had knocked over. They had left off doing that now. Once upon a time Mr. Marble had not shown any active objection, but two or three times lately he had caught them at it, and had rushed out in blind, wordless fury. The children had seen his face as he mouthed at them, and that experience was enough
