Gossamer

e at my hotel next

, "if we're to keep our

t and did not want to s

mpers improve as the day goes on,-up to a certain point, not right into the evening

t of his pocket and presented it to me. It contained a nicely printed certificate, which assured me that I was the owner of on

I don't mind. If you will work out the rate of exchange while I f

ghed at th

ors and your influence with Ascher. Those shares will be worth a couple of hundred dollars ea

e easiest way there is of making money. I thanke

rcade like one of the covered shopping ways which one sees in some English towns, especially in Birmingham. There was a large number of little shops in it, luncheon places, barbers' shops, newspaper stalls, tobacconists' stalls, florists' stalls, and sweet shops, which displayed an enormous variety of candies. We were in the very centre of the business part of the city, a part to

would make no stop before the eleventh floor. I should have liked very much to make a journey in an express lift, and I hoped that

st one building, right opposite to us, which was of English height. It was not in the least English in any other way. It was white and very dignified. Its lines were severely classical. It had tall, narro

e are,"

is Greek temple can't

the exa

threshold or say grace, or perform some kind of ce

out even bowing. There was nothing for me to do but follow him. Tim followed me, nursi

e citizens of this town flitted from one glass-fronted house to another. They met in narrow streets and spoke to each other with grave dignity. They spoke in four languages, and English was the one used least. From the remoter parts of the place, the slums, if such a polished town has slums, came the sound of typewriters worked with extreme rapidity. The manual labourers, in this as in

g of some mysterious monarch, or-my feeling wavered-one of the inferior priests of a strange cult. He led us through doors into a large room, impressively empty and silen

glimpses of bright steel instruments, very strangely shaped. It is contrived that we see them in a cold, clear light, the light of scientific relentlessness. There is a suggestion of torture, not brutal but exquisitely refined, of perfected pain, achieved by the stimulation of recondite nerves of very delicate sensibility. Lawyers wear archaic robes and use a strange language in their mysteries, conveying to us a belief that Justice is an ancient witc

urs before, must have smoked a very good cigar in the room, and the scent of it lingered. The doors of huge safes must have been opened. From the recesses of these steel chambers had oozed air which had lain stagnant and lifeless round piles of gold bon

the face of the surgeon who owned it. He walked with buoyant confidence into Ascher's office. My case was different. I stood and then sat, the victim of a partial anaesthetic. I saw and heard dimly as if

ntered the room. We all shook hands with him. He was Stutz, the New York partner

ed to us and we to him. He was Mr. Mildmay.

believed in them. His nervousness seemed to pass away from him as he spoke about his invention with simple-minded en

together in absorbed contemplation over some singular feature of the machine's organism. Gorman, the elder brother, watched them with a confident smile. Ascher and Stutz sat gravely silent. They waited Mildmay's opinion. He was the man of the mom

shed and triumphant. The child of his ingenious brain had survive

said. "I see no reason why it sho

"you will study the subject further a

t doubt a lyric in Mildmay's heart as he left the room. Tim packed the thing up again. Now that the mechanical part of the business was over, he relapsed into shy silence in a co

's no doubt about the v

"before we come to any decision; but in the meanwhile

r proposals. We are pre

e language was perhaps German, perhaps Hebrew or Yiddish or wh

rive any other out of the market. There's no possibility of com

e required," said Stutz,

invention are owned by a small company in which I am the chief shareholder. If we ask the public for a million dollars and get them-I don't say we can't get them. We may. But if we do I shall

red that he had come across frankness like Gorman's before and had not altogether liked it. Gorman went on. He explained, as he had explained to me, th

nough. I will make over to you such bonus shares as may be agreed upon. The only risk we run i

hly. It was also plain to me, though not, I think, to Gorman, that it

ay. I don't want to flatter you, gentlemen, but there isn't a firm in the world

so," sa

roposal?" s

y say that your share in the profits will be satisfactory to you. Sir James Digby is one of our directors. T

y Gorman's confidence in me as an "influence," I must say

, "and I'm afraid that my opinio

there was a curiously wistful expression in them.

orman's plan sounds feasib

opinion of it?

insistency. I could not very

he said, "whether it will work. But th

an hardly give you an opinion that I could call my own, but if my father's opinion would be of any use to you

isn't he?"

fifteen years. Still I'm sure I could t

consider the opinion of Sir James Digby's

" I said. "It would be o

n?" said Ascher, sti

his friends. Everybody says that they were quite right and that I ought not to have obje

opinion of the sch

myself clear. I think we are ju

r intellects of steel, your delight

es of the Irish mind. He went back to the m

id, "the kind of bus

we may have a proposal to lay before you. Our firm cannot, you will understand, take shares in your company. That is not a bank's business. But I myself,

z obstinately. "It is not the

inly at an end. We ro

said. He followed us out of the office nursing his machine and plainly i

he street. "We've got Ascher, Stutz & Co qu

had definitely refused to entertain our proposa

to admit to you and me, or even to each other, that they were out for what they could get from the old company. They have to keep up the pretence that they mean legitimate business. That

s office. I was struck again by the purity of line and the severe simplicity of the