He drew a sheet of paper towards him and began to write.

"You ought to see the work at Panama," he said. "It is very interesting and of course of immense importance. Certainly you must see that.

Afterwards----"

He scribbled on his sheet of paper, making lists of place names and adding notes about ways of travelling.

"If you go further south still----" he said. "I don't recommend the Amazon, a huge river of course, but unless you are interested in rubber or entomology. The insect life I believe----"

"I'm interested in everything," I said, "even insects which bite."

"Well, Para, perhaps, then south again. The South American ports are worth seeing."

A clerk entered while he was speaking. Ascher handed him the list he had written.

"Look out the names of our agents in these places," he said, "and have letters of introduction made out to them for Sir James Digby."

The clerk left the room and I thanked Ascher warmly. It seemed to me that he was taking a great deal of trouble for which he could expect no kind of reward. He waved my grat.i.tude aside.

"I think," he said, "that our agents will be able to make your trip interesting for you. They can tell you what you want to know about the trade and the natural wealth of the places you visit. They will put you in the way of finding out the trend of political feeling. It is their business to know these things, and in visiting new countries--new in the sense that they have only lately felt the influences of our civilisation--it is just these things that you will want to know. If you were going to Italy, or Egypt, or Greece----"

Ascher sighed. I felt that he would have preferred Italy to Brazil if he had been travelling for pleasure.

"Ah, there," I said, "an artist or a scholar would be a better friend to have than a banker."

"Even there," said Ascher, "the present and the future matter more than the past, perhaps. But are you tied at all by time? The tour which I have indicated will take some months."

"I am an idle man," I said. "I shall go on as long as your introductions last, gathering knowledge which will not be the slightest use to me or any one else."

"I had better provide you with a circular letter of credit," said Ascher. "It is never wise to carry considerable sums about in your pocket."

We had got to money, to business in the strictest sense of the word.

My opportunity had plainly come for attacking the subject of the cash register. Yet I hesitated. A banker ought to be the easiest man in the world to talk business to. There is no awkwardness about the subject of toothache in a dentist's parlour. He expects to be talked to about teeth. It ought to have been an equally simple thing to speak to Ascher about the future of a company in which we were both interested. Yet I hesitated. There was something in his manner, a grave formality, which kept me miles away from him. I thanked him for the promise of the letter of credit and then sat silent for a minute.

"By the way," said Ascher, "I have just had a visit from a man on business in which you are interested."

"Was that the man who pa.s.sed me in the anteroom before I was shown in here?"

"Yes. He came to talk to me about Gorman's new cash register. He was not an accredited agent, you will understand. He did not profess to represent anybody. He was not empowered to treat with us in any way, but----"

Ascher smiled faintly.

"I understand," I said, "a sort of informal amba.s.sador who could easily be disowned if anything he said turned out to be inconvenient. In politics men of that sort are very useful; but I somehow had the idea that business methods are more straightforward."

"All negotiations," said Ascher, "whether in politics or business are carried on in much the same way. But before I go into his suggestions I had better tell you how the matter stands. Mildmay sent us his report and it was entirely favourable to the new machine. I think the invention is likely to turn out a valuable property. We have made inquiries and find out that the patent rights are duly protected here and in all the chief European countries. In fact----"

"It was really that and not my travels which I came to talk to you about to-day. I may take it that we have got a good thing."

"We think so," said Ascher, "and our opinion is confirmed by the fact that we are not the only people who think so. If I am right about the man who visited me this morning we have very good evidence that our opinion is sound. The men who are in the best position to know about cash registers, who are most interested in their future----"

"The makers of the existing machines?"

"Exactly. That is to say, if I am right about my visitor."

"But how did they--how could any one know about Tim Gorman's invention?"

Ascher shrugged his shoulders.

"Surely," I said, "Gorman can't have been such a fool as to talk to newspaper reporters."

"We need not suppose so," said Ascher. "My experience is that anything worth knowing always is known. The world of business is a vast whispering gallery. There is no such thing as secrecy."

"Well," I said, "the main point is that this man did know. What did he want?"

"He wanted us to sell the patent rights," said Ascher. "What he said was that he had a client--he posed as some kind of commission agent--who would pay a substantial sum for them."

"That is just what Gorman said would happen once it was understood that your firm is behind the new company."

"Gorman is--well, astute. But you understand, I am sure, that we cannot do that kind of business."

"I always had a suspicion," I said, "that Gorman's scheme was fishy."

"I do not say fishy," said Ascher. "Gorman's plan is legitimate, legitimate business, but business of an unenlightened kind. What is wrong with Gorman is that he does not see far enough, does not grasp the root principle of all business. We have a valuable invention. I do not mean merely an invention which will put money into the pocket of the inventor and into our pockets. If it were valuable only in that way Gorman would be quite right, and our wisest course would be to take what we could get with the least amount of risk and trouble, in other words to accept the best price which we could induce the buyers to give us.

But this invention is valuable in quite another way. The new machine, if we are right about it, is going to facilitate the business of retail sellers all over the world. It will save time, increase accuracy, and, being cheaper, make its way into places where the old machines never went."

"Ah," I said, "curiously enough I looked at the matter in that way when Gorman first mentioned it to me. I said that the world ought to get the benefit of this invention."

Ascher nodded.

"I see that," I went on. "I understand that way of looking at it. But surely that's altruism, not business. Business men don't risk their money with the general idea of benefiting humanity. That isn't the way things are done."

"I agree," said Ascher. "It's not the way things are done or can be done at present, though there is more altruism in business than most people think. Even we financiers----"

"I know you subscribe to charity," I said, "largely, enormously."

"That's not what I mean," said Ascher. "But we need not go into that. I believe that business is not philanthropy, finance is not altruism."

"Then why----?" I said. "On strict business principles, altruism apart, why not take what we can get out of Tim Gorman's invention and let the thing itself drop into the dustheap?"

"On business principles," said Ascher, "on the strictest business principles, it would be foolish to do that. From time to time men hit on some improvement in the way of making things or in the way of dealing with things after they are made, that is to say in business methods.

Every such improvement increases the wealth of the world, tends to make everybody richer. This invention which we have got hold of is a small thing. It's only going to do a little, a very little to make the world richer, but it is going to do something for it is going to lessen the labour required for certain results and therefore is going to increase men's power, a little, just a little. That is why we must make the thing available, if we can; in order to add to the general wealth, and therefore to our own wealth. Those are business principles."

Ascher paused. I had nothing to say for a moment. Business principles as he explained them were not the business principles I was accustomed to, certainly not the business principles on which Gorman acted. After a minute's silence Ascher went on.

"The mistake which is most often made in business," he said, "is to suppose that we grow rich by taking riches from other men, or that nations prosper by depriving other nations of prosperity. That would be true if riches consisted of money, and if there were just so much money and no more in the world. Then business and finance would be a scramble, in which the roughest and strongest scrambler would get most. But that is not so."

"Isn't it?" I said. "I should have thought that business just is a scramble."

"No," said Ascher, "it is not. Nations grow rich, that is to say, get comfort, ease, and even luxury, only when other nations are growing rich too, only because other nations are growing rich."