"
"Good man!" the other exclaimed. "How?"
Dredlinton hesitated for a moment. There was a particularly ugly smile
upon his lips.
"Let us put it in this way," he said. "Supposing you fail altogether
with Wingate?"
"Well?"
"Supposing you then pass him on to me and I succeed in getting him to
sell the shares? What about it?"
"It will be worth a thousand pounds to you," Phipps declared.
"Two!"
Phipps shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't bargain," he said, "but two let it be--that is, of course, on
condition that I have previously failed."
Dredlinton's dull eyes glittered. The slight contraction of his lips did
nothing to improve his appearance.
"I shall do my best," he promised.
There was a knock at the door. A clerk from outside presented himself. As
he held the door for a moment ajar, a wave of tangled sounds swept into
the room,--the metallic clash of a score of typewriters, the shouting and
bargaining of eager customers, the tinkle of telephones in the long
series of cubicles.
"Mr. Wingate is here to see you, sir," the young man announced.
"You can show him in," Peter Phipps directed.
CHAPTER XIV
Phipps received his visitor with a genial smile and outstretched hand.
"Delighted to see you, Mr. Wingate," he said heartily. "Take a chair,
please. I do not know whether you smoke in the mornings, but these
Cabanas," he added, opening the box, "are extraordinarily mild and I
think quite pleasant.
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