He sat motionless at his desk, like a big spider for who
time has no meaning. Before him lay two newspapers,
folded so as to expose paragraphs heavily indicated
by blue pencil-marks. They were not financial journals,
and for that reason it was improbable that he would
have seen these paragraphs, if the Secretary of the
Company had not marked them, and brought them to him.
That official had been vastly more fluttered by them than
he found it possible to be. In slightly-varying language,
these two items embedded in so-called money articles
reported the rumour that a charge of fraud had arisen
in connection with the Rubber Consols corner, and that
sensational disclosures were believed to be impending.
Thorpe looked with a dulled, abstracted eye at these papers,
lying on the desk, and especially at the blue pencil-lines
upon them, as he pondered many things. Their statement,
thus scattered broadcast to the public, seemed at
once to introduce a new element into the situation,
and to leave it unchanged. That influence of some sort
had been exerted to get this story into these papers,
it did not occur to him for an instant to doubt.
To his view, all things that were put into papers
were put there for a purpose--it would express his
notion more clearly, perhaps, to say for a price.
Of the methods of Fleet Street, he was profoundly ignorant,
but his impressions of them were all cynical.
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