"You would actually come and work in my office, almost as a menial, on a salary of two pounds a week, while I enjoy the million you expected would be yours?"

"Beggars mustn't be choosers," returned Joan, drily. "You don't withdraw the offer?"

"No-o," replied George slowly, doubtful whether his scheme of humiliation had been quite wise, yet finding a certain pleasure in it still. "The girl's expression is queer," he said to himself. "She looks as if she had something up her sleeve."

He was right. Joan had something "up her sleeve," something too small to be visible, yet large enough, perhaps, to be the seed of fortune.

CHAPTER III--A Deal in Clerios

George Gallon had lately left a well-known firm of stockbrokers, in which he had been junior partner, and set up business on his own account. He had started at a trying time, about the close of the Boer war, when the financial world was in a state of depression; but he had since brought off two or three _coups_ for his clients and himself, and though he was unpopular, he had begun to be talked of among a limited circle in the City as a man who would succeed.

Joan Carthew had heard "George's luck" discussed by guests at Lady Thornd.y.k.e's, when she had been at home from school on her holidays; therefore it was that she had so promptly accepted the offer thrown to her in derision, as a bone is flung to a chained dog. "If I keep my eyes and ears open, I shall get tips," was the thought that flashed into her mind.

If Joan had been an ordinary eighteen-year-old girl, she would have faltered before the difficulty of turning such "tips" to her own advantage, on a salary of two pounds a week; but she would not have entered George Gallon's service if she had been one to falter before difficulties; and three days after the reading of the will which left the girl a pensioner on her own wits, she presented herself at the office in Copthall Court.

It was early, and Gallon had not yet arrived. However, his curiosity to see whether Joan would really keep her engagement brought him to the City half an hour earlier than usual. When he came in, there sat at an inner office, at the desk used by his late stenographer, a young woman plainly dressed in black, though not in mourning deep enough to depress the spirits of the beholder.

It was Joan Carthew. She had already taken off her hat and hung it on a peg. Gallon noticed instantly that her beautiful golden-brown hair was dressed more simply than he had seen it. Every detail of her costume was suited to the new part she was about to play--that of the business woman.

"Good morning, Mr. Gallon," she said crisply. "Your head clerk told me this would be my desk. I have brought my own typewriter. I hope you don't mind. You know, from the test you made the other day, that I take down quickly from dictation, and that my typing is clear. I am ready to begin work whenever you are."

"Glad to find you so businesslike," said Gallon, uncomfortable in spite of himself, though there was a keen relish in the situation.

"You will, I hope, never find me anything else," quietly replied Joan.

So the new _regime_ began. At first, for some days, the man was ill at ease, could not collect his thoughts for dictation, and stammered in his speech. He regretted that his desire to humiliate the girl had tempted him to offer this position; but Joan's att.i.tude was so tactful, so un.o.btrusive, that little by little he forgot his awkwardness and even the meanness of his motive in making her his dependent. He almost forgot that he had ever asked her to marry him; and because he found her astonishingly clever and useful, he waived the idea of further insults which had flitted through his head when first the dethroned heiress became his secretary.

One autumn morning, Gallon was late. Joan sat waiting in his office, and had opened such correspondence as was not marked "Private," had typed several letters ready for her employer's signature, and having no more business which could be transacted until he appeared, began to glance through an ill.u.s.trated Society weekly which she took in. This paper she always read with eagerness; not because she had the morbid interest of an outsider in the doings of Society, with a capital S, but because any information she could glean about important people might be of service in the career to which she undauntedly looked forward.

On one page of this particular paper, country houses, electric-launches, libraries, motor-cars, and even family jewels were advertised; and it was an absorbing page to Joan. To-day she gazed long at the reproduction of a handsome steam-yacht, which for some weeks past had been advertised for sale, for the sum of twelve thousand pounds. Only a few months ago, she had been planning to have some day a yacht of her own. It had been one of the many pleasant things she had meant to do with Lady Thornd.y.k.e's money.

"I shouldn't mind owning the _t.i.tania_, if she's as good as her photograph," the girl was thinking, when George Gallon and a fat, foreign-looking man came in.

"You can go back into the next room, Miss Carthew," said George, abruptly. "I shall not need you at present, and you may tell them outside that I am not to be disturbed."

Joan rose and walked into the outer office, where the three clerks, who were all more or less in love with the beautiful secretary, glanced up joyfully from their work at sight of her. The youngest, whose desk was close to the door, had already proposed. He was a dreamy youth with a fluffy brain, but his father was a rich man known in the City as "the Salmon King," who cherished hopes that one day his son would cut a figure on the Stock Exchange. These family details the young man had confided to Joan as a lure to matrimony, and though she had answered that he was a "foolish boy," and nothing was farther from her intention than to settle down as Mrs. Tommy Mellis, she had not in so many words refused the honour.

Now she whispered a request that, if he had still a regard for her, he would slip away and buy a box of chocolates, for the need of which she was perishing. A moment later Tommy was out of his chair, and Joan was in it. His was the one seat in the room where conversation in Gallon's private office could by any means be overheard; and Gallon was aware that whatever might go in at Tommy's right ear promptly went out at the left, without leaving the smallest impression of its meaning.

"Is the deal certain to come off?" she heard George inquire.

"Sure as the sun is to rise to-morrow," replied another voice with a foreign accent. "You are the only outsider in the know. That's worth something, isn't it?"

"It's worth what I've promised for it."

"At least that. And I want an advance to-day."

"In such a hurry? Remember I shan't make anything, or be sure you haven't fooled me, for weeks. Still, I can manage a hundred."

"I need ten times that."

"You'll have it the day the Clerios are taken over."

"'Sh! not so loud! And no names, for Heaven's sake, man!"

"Oh, that's all right. The clerk near the door is a fool. The only one out there with any real brains is a girl, but she doesn't know the difference between Clerios and clerics. That's why I employ a woman for a secretary. She spends her spare energy on the fashions, and doesn't bother about things which are none of her business."

In spite of this protest, Gallon dropped his voice. Only a word here and there started out of the broken murmurs on the other side of the door; but one more sentence, almost whole, came to her ears. "Grierson Mordaunt ... sort of chap ... carries these things through." Then reappeared Tommy with the chocolates, and Joan went to her own desk; but the stray bits of information were as flint and steel in her brain, and together they struck out a spark of inspiration. She was as sure as if she had heard all details of the transaction that the World's Shipping Combine, of which the American millionaire, Grierson Mordaunt, stood at the head, had arranged to take over the Clerio line of Italian boats plying between Mediterranean ports. The fat man with the foreign accent was no doubt the confidential agent of the Italian company, and being acquainted with George Gallon and his methods, had given the secret away for a consideration. Doubtless he was poor, perhaps in difficulties; otherwise he would have kept the information and bought all the Clerio shares he could lay his hands upon.

Now Joan knew why Gallon had written yesterday to a man in Manchester, asking him how many Clerios he had to sell, and what was the lowest price he was prepared to take for them, adding that it would be useless, in the present depressed state of the market, to name a high figure.

This man had been requested to wire his answer, and at any moment it might arrive.

When Joan had jumped so far in her conclusions, Gallon escorted his visitor out, flinging back word that he would be in again in half an hour.

The girl's blood sang in her ears. It seemed to her that Fortune was knocking at the door; but could she find the key to open it? She called all her wits to the rescue, and in five minutes that key was grating in the lock.

In Gallon's private room was a small desk, which she used when her services were wanted there. This gave her an excuse to go in, and in pa.s.sing she threw a glance at Tommy Mellis, which caused him, after the lapse of a decent interval (he counted eighty seconds), to follow.

"Once you said you would do anything for me," she began, with a lovely look. "Did you mean it?"

"Rather!"

"Well, then, the next question is: Will your father do anything for _you_?"

"He'll do a good deal."

"If you tell him you've a tip about some shares that are bound to rise, will he give you the money to buy them?"

"He'd lend it. That's his way. He'd be tickled to see me taking an interest in business. But what has that got to do with----"

"I want to buy some shares--lots of shares--all I can get hold of.

To-day they're going cheap. To-morrow, who can say? They are Clerios."

"But, look here, even I know that Clerios are no good. It's a badly managed line, and the shares are down to next to nothing."

"All the better. Mr. Gallon mustn't know you are in this, as he wants to get hold of all the shares himself. You must trust me enough to have them put into my name, and when I've got your profit for you, we'll go halves. Can you see your father inside half an hour?"

"His place is just round the corner."

"Well, then, if you _do_ care anything for me, ask him to see you through a big deal. You shall really make on it, I promise you, something worth having besides my--grat.i.tude."

"The governor's a queer fish. If I should let him in----"

"You won't let him in. But we don't want your father or anybody else in with us. All we want is the loan, and his name, which is a good one in the City, I know. I trust you for that. You must show how clever you are, if you're anxious to please me. I'll manage the rest. Now, like a dear, good boy, run off and arrange things with your father."