'"
"No--twenty-five," replied Thorpe.
The dark man spoke: "The jobbers' price is twenty-three."
"To carry over--yes," Thorpe answered. "But to buy it
is twenty-five."
The two sons of the race which invented mental arithmetic
exchanged an alert glance, and looked at the floor
for an engrossed instant.
"I don't mind telling you," Thorpe interposed upon
their silence, "I put on that extra two pounds because you
got up that story about applying to the Stock Exchange
Committee on a charge of fraud."
"We didn't get up any story," said Rostocker, curtly.
"You tried to plant it on us," Aronson declared.
"One of your own Directors put it about. I thought it
was a fake at the time."
This view of the episode took Thorpe by surprise.
As it seemed, in passing, to involve a compliment to his
own strategic powers, he accepted it without comment.
"Well--it is twenty-five, anyway," he told them,
with firmness.
"Twenty-four," suggested Aronson, after another momentary pause.
"Not a shilling less than twenty-five," Thorpe insisted,
with quiet doggedness.
"We can always pay our creditors and let you whistle,"
Rostocker reminded him, laconically.
"You can do anything you like," was the reply, "except buy
Rubber Consols under twenty-five. It doesn't matter a fig
to me whether you go bankrupt or not.
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