As if he had caught some echo of his muttered sentence, the stranger went on,

"In the way of business a bill indorsed by your Company and a certain Bertrand Kleinwort came into our hands some time since. We intrusted a correspondent to make some inquiries concerning the drawer and acceptor of that bill, and I have thought it my duty to communicate the result of those inquiries to you. We find the drawer is a poor man in a very small way of business in a remote German village, whilst the acceptor's address is at an empty house in Cologne."

"Impossible, sir!" retorted Mr. Forde. "You have been deceived, vilely deceived. Mr. Kleinwort is a most respectable merchant, a gentleman whose character is above reproach, and he assured us he was personally acquainted with both acceptor and drawer, and that their names were good as the Bank of England."

"I am sorry to say," was the reply, "I should not feel inclined to take Mr. Kleinwort's word concerning the solvency of any person whose bill he wished to negotiate. I felt you must have been deceived, and I therefore considered it only right to inform you what are the nature of the acceptances you have indorsed."

"Very kind of you, I am sure," was the half-sneering reply, "but I repeat, sir, you have been deceived. In their own country the men who drew and accepted those bills stand as well as the General Chemical Company does here."

A very dubious smile hovered about the lips of Mr. Forde's visitor as he answered,

"I have no means of disproving your last assertion; indeed, I fear it is perfectly true in every particular. I may add, however, I shall give orders that for the future no bill of any kind or description which bears the indorsement of your Company is to be taken by our house. Good morning, sir."

But Mr. Forde did not answer. With a defiant air he strode to the window and turned his back on his visitor, who opened the door for himself, walked through the outer office, and so made his way to Vedast Lane, shaking the dust of the General Chemical Company off his feet as he went.

As for Mr. Forde, he sat down and wrote a letter to a certain "Dear Will" residing at Liverpool, in which he told him in strict confidence that the work at St. Vedast Wharf was beginning to tell on his health, and that if he (Will) chanced to hear of any good situation likely to fall vacant, his correspondent would take it as a great favour if he would let him know. In a postscript Mr. Forde added he should have no objection to go to Spain as superintendent of a mine if an adequate salary were offered. "Bess and the children," he explained, "could take a nice little place near Eastbourne or Southampton till affairs were more settled in Spain, or they might even go to the south of France. He believed education there was very good and very cheap, and the children could acquire the language without expense."

By the time he had finished this epistle Mr. Forde looked upon his future as almost settled. He had taken the first step, and would be certain to get some good berth.

Out of England he trusted it might be. Had any one offered him an appointment at that moment in the West Indies, I think he would have taken it.

Small as the man's power of realizing future ills happened to be, he would have said unhesitatingly that under some aspects he considered "Yellow Jack" a less formidable enemy than John Bull.

He would go; he made up his mind to that, but not until Will had got something good for him, something he should not feel it derogatory to his dignity to accept.

With this letter lying sealed before him, tracing idle lines on his blotting-paper Mr. Forde sat dreaming dreams of future fortune, seeing visions of cork trees and gitanas, of veiled senoras and haughty hidalgos, hearing the plash of fountains and the tinkling of guitars, when a clerk disturbed his reverie.

"Mr. Halling wishes to speak to you, sir," said the youth.

"Show Mr. Halling in," was the reply, and Rupert accordingly entered arrayed in that velveteen suit which Mr. Forde secretly admired, and one like which he longed to don, and would in fact have donned had he not dreaded the displeasure of his directors.

Mr. Forde had light hair and fair florid complexion, small dark blue eyes, so dark, indeed, that when he was angry or excited they might have been taken for black, and he considered that these peculiarities of appearance would show to enormous advantage against sable velveteen.

As red-haired men always affect blue neck-ties, as dark complexioned men choose light coloured garments, as stout men like coats which button tight round their waists; so on the same inexplicable principle of selection, Mr. Forde would have liked to strut about St. Vedast Wharf arrayed in a similar suit to that which made Rupert Halling look in the eyes of City men so handsome and disreputable a vagabond.

"I was expecting to see you earlier," remarked Mr. Forde.

"Yes," Rupert assented, waiting his opportunity to make the communication he had been over-persuaded to convey all by himself into the enemy's camp.

"Anything new?" continued Mr. Forde.

"One thing, which I fear it will not much please you to hear," was the reply.

Mr. Forde looked up from the purposeless tracings he had resumed after the first greetings were over. He looked up, his face darkening with the approach of one of those tempests of passion Rupert, as well as every other person who chanced to be unpleasantly connected with the General Chemical Company's Manager, had felt sweep over him.

Well, it was all nearly at an end. He had stood many a cannonade without flinching, and another broadside could not much matter.

"I have come to tell you," he went on hurriedly, without giving the other time to speak, "that Mr. Mortomley cannot go on any longer. He must call a meeting of his creditors."

Holding the arms of his chair with both hands, Mr. Forde rose, gasping, literally gasping with rage.

"Where is he now?" he asked hoarsely. His voice was so strange and choked, Rupert could scarcely have recognized it.

"He is at his solicitor's."

"The villain, the cowardly unprincipled vagabond--the thief--the cur; but I won't stay to face my directors over it. I won't stand between him and them. I will send in my resignation within the hour. He has ruined me."

And having delivered himself of this sentence in a _crescendo_ of fury, Mr. Forde took his hat, thrust it down over his forehead, and walked out of the office.

"Well, that is one way of cutting the knot, certainly," thought Rupert, who was, by the manager's move, left standing in the middle of the new carpet more utterly astounded than he had ever before been in the whole course of his life.

"I may as well go too," he thought, after a minute's consideration; and he was moving towards the door with this intention, when Mr. Forde came back again, took off his hat, flung himself into his chair, and asked--

"Now, what is the meaning of all this?"

CHAPTER XI.

RUPERT SPEAKS VERY PLAINLY.

Having made up his mind to place the state of his affairs before his creditors, Mr. Mortomley decided to break the news to Mr. Forde in person.

This intention, however, was abandoned at the advice of a very shrewd individual who, happening to meet the "conspirators," as he facetiously styled Rupert and his uncle, in the City, stopped to shake hands and inquired if there was "anything fresh." Whereupon as he happened to be a creditor, and one who had followed with some interest the spectacle of Mortomley slipping off _terra firma_ into hitherto unknown water, which grew deeper and deeper at every effort he made to get out of it, Rupert told him in so many words what they meant to do and whither they were bound.

"And the very best thing you can do is to stop," was the reply. "I will do all in my power to help you through, and if you want a friendly trustee I should not object to act. But," and he laid his hand impressively on Mortomley's arm, "you go straight to your solicitor without turning to the right or to the left. Put it beyond your own power to draw back before you see Forde. I have always told you that, although to such a concern the amount of your indebtedness is or should be nothing, still you are a link in a chain, and you know what happens if even one link gives way."

"But I should not like his first intimation of the matter to be by circular," answered Mr. Mortomley.

"First intimation, pooh!" retorted the other. "The man is not a total idiot. He knows you are in difficulties; he knows how difficulties always end. He may not expect the end to come so soon, but he must be certain it is on its way."

Nevertheless, Mortomley hesitated. This was just like Mortomley--to pause when staking something high for himself, and consider Dick, Tom, or Harry might not like his throw.

This had been a weak point in every Mortomley, since the days of him who left the Place to seek his fortune; but it was intensified in Archibald who, through this and other similar traits was about to bring the last noble left by his predecessors to ninepence.

"Now promise me," said the self-constituted adviser, noticing his hesitation; "I know Forde better than you. I have been behind the scenes in that respectable concern, and could let you into a good many mysteries if I chose; and I can tell you if you go to Vedast Wharf before you have been to Mr. Leigh, you won't go into liquidation till you have nothing left to liquidate. If Forde must be told, let your nephew tell him."

"I will go to him fast enough if you will accompany me," answered Rupert; "but I should not care for the task of breaking it to him alone."

Whereat the other laughed loudly. "Look here," he said, "what is there to be afraid of? He won't try to murder you, and if he did he could not well succeed in the attempt. He will blow up, doubtless; rave and blaspheme a good deal; swear you are all swindlers together, and that there is only one honest man, himself, left on earth. He will then calm down and try to cajole you to keep things moving a little longer; then he will offer you more credit, and, perhaps, to help you to open fresh credits; and if the thing is not done, he will over-persuade you to go on. But if the thing is done, and he knows remonstrance is useless, he will make the best of a bad business. He will tell his directors your estate is good to pay forty shillings in the pound, and you may have more peace and comfort in your home and your business than you have known for many a long day past."

There was truth in all this--hard, keen, practical truth--as Rupert, who had experienced some very stormy weather at St. Vedast Wharf, knew, and Mortomley, who had been kept pretty well in ignorance of the frequent tempests which prevailed there, instinctively felt.

"What you say is right enough," remarked Rupert after a pause. "But come now, Mr. Gibbons, be frank. If it were your own case now, should you like facing Forde?"

"So little that I should not face him at all; but if, as Mr. Mortomley seems to think he must be faced, I should, if I were in your place, put on a bold front and beard the lion in his den. It is your only chance. I tell you straightforwardly if once he gets hold of Mr. Mortomley the estate is doomed."