"Certainly," Jacob a.s.sented. "By the bye, will you let me have one more glance at the undertaking to sell?"

"You can read it through as many times as you like," the other replied, producing it. "It's as tight a contract as can be drawn. The lawyer's letter proves that."

Jacob nodded, and, spreading the doc.u.ment out, tapped it with the end of his penholder.

"There is just one thing omitted which I think should be in," he said.

"What's that?" Mr. Montague demanded.

"Well, I think you ought to add 'Leicester Square' after the Empress Music Hall," Jacob pointed out. "Curiously enough, there happens to be another Empress Music Hall in Sh.o.r.editch, the proprietor of which spells his name P-e-t-e-r. I looked it up in the telephone directory just now."

There was a cold and ominous silence. Mr. Montague breathed heavily.

The Marquis sighed.

"Most unfortunate!" he murmured.

"Most what?" Jacob asked, turning towards him.

"Most unfortunate," the Marquis repeated. "You are the first person, Mr. Pratt, to whom this--er--enterprise has been suggested, who has seen through our little financial effort."

Jacob was somewhat staggered. He looked across at Montague.

"You're on top again, Pratt," that gentleman conceded gloomily. "The music hall in question is the Sh.o.r.editch 'Empress.'"

"And do you mean to say," Jacob demanded incredulously, "that you have induced the people whose names are on that list to part with their money, believing they are going to acquire an interest in the Empress Music Hall in Leicester Square?"

"That's all right," Montague a.s.sented. "It was dead easy. You see, they were mostly the Marquis's friends, toffs, without any head for business, and we swore them to absolute secrecy--told them if they breathed a word of it, the whole thing would be spoilt."

"But you aren't giving fifty thousand pounds for the Sh.o.r.editch Empress?"

The financier laughed scornfully.

"Not likely! That's where the Marquis and I make a bit. We have another agreement with Peter, who's a pal and a white man, to buy the place for fifteen thousand. Then we've an arrangement--"

"You needn't go on," Jacob interrupted. "I can quite see that there are plenty of ways of working the swindle."

"Swindle?" his host repeated, with a pained expression. "My dear Mr.

Pratt!"

"Why, what else can you call it?" Jacob protested.

The Marquis coughed.

"It is only lately," he said, "that, with the a.s.sistance of Mr. Dane Montague, I have endeavoured to supplement my income in this fashion.

I do not understand the harshness of your term, Mr. Pratt, as applied to this transaction. I have little experience of city life, but I have always understood that money was made there, in financial and Stock Exchange circles, by buying from a man something which you knew was worth more money, selling it to another and--er--pocketing the difference. Surely this involves a certain amount of what a purist would call deceit?"

"On the contrary," Jacob pointed out, "that is a fair bargain, because the two men have different ideas of the value of a thing, and each backs his own opinion."

"But there are surely many cases," the Marquis argued, "in which the seller knows and the buyer does not know? Is it inc.u.mbent on the seller to impart to the buyer his superior knowledge? I think not.

Without a doubt, business in the city is conducted on the general lines of the man knowing the most making the most. I look upon our little transaction as being exactly on parallel lines. We knew that the Sh.o.r.editch Music Hall was meant. The people who advanced the money thought that the Leicester Square Music Hall was meant. Therefore, we make the money."

Jacob rose to his feet. He was feeling a little dazed.

"Your ideas of commercial ethics, Marquis," he acknowledged, "are excellent in their way, but do you imagine that they will be shared by the members of your family who have parted with their money?"

"I trust, sir," the Marquis replied stiffly, "that they will behave like sportsmen and see the humour of the transaction."

"I hope they will!" Jacob murmured fervently, as he took his leave.

"In any case," the Marquis concluded complacently, "their cheques have been cashed."

CHAPTER XIX

In the course of his financial peregrinations amongst the highways and byways of the city, Mr. Dane Montague made many acquaintances. It chanced that soon after the exploitation of the Sh.o.r.editch Empress Music Hall, a flotation which brought Mr. Montague many admirers from the underworlds of finance, it fell to his lot to give a luncheon party to celebrate the culmination of a subsidiary financial swindle and to plan further activities in the same direction. His guests were Philip Mason, the well-known man about town, and Joe Hartwell, the trans-atlantic young adventurer. After the third bottle of champagne, it transpired that the luncheon party had a further object.

"It's queer that you should have run across the little beast, too,"

Mr. Dane Montague observed. "Got it laid by for him, haven't you?"

Mason's good-looking but dissipated face was suddenly ugly.

"If I could wring his neck," he muttered, "I'd do it to-morrow and thank my stars."

"He'll get his some day from this guy," Joe Hartwell added earnestly.

"I'm kind of hanging round for the chance."

Mr. Montague ordered expensive cigars and the three men's heads drew a little closer together.

"We ought to be able to put it across him," the host continued. "We've brains enough, and between us we know the ropes. The only thing is that it's pretty difficult to hurt him financially. I believe it's a fact that he's well on towards his second million."

"There are other ways," Hartwell remarked, draining his gla.s.s with slow, unwholesome deliberation. "If I'd got him in New York I should know what to do. I guess there are back doors in this little village."

"Here's one of the clan!" Montague exclaimed, looking up. "Sit down and have a drink with us, Felixstowe."

Lord Felixstowe, who had paused at the table on his way through the restaurant, surveyed the little party without undue enthusiasm.

"Off it to-day, my children," he announced. "I'm playing polo at Ranelagh this afternoon. Any one want to back the Crimson Sashes?"

Mr. Montague stretched out his hand and drew the young man a little nearer.

"Look here, Felixstowe," he confided, "we're talking about Pratt--Jacob Pratt. You know the little devil."

"What about him?" his lordship enquired, helping himself to a cigar from the box on the table.

"Philip here, and Hartwell, have got it up against him hard. So have I. We think it's about time he was taught a lesson. There might be something for you out of it."