Semingham.
"Well," amended Tom, "something Ruston thinks it worth his while to pay for, anyhow."
"That is to say they have treaties touching, or purporting to touch, Omofaga."
"And," added Harry Dennison, who did not lack a certain business shrewdness, "probably their Government behind them to some extent."
Tom flung himself into a chair.
"The thing's monstrous," he pronounced. "Semingham and you, Dennison, are, besides himself – and he's got nothing – the only people responsible up to now. And he asks you to give him an unlimited credit without giving you a word of information! It's the coolest thing I ever heard of in all my life."
"Of course he means the Company to pay in the end," Semingham reminded the hostile critic.
"Time enough to talk of the Company when we see it," retorted Tom, with an aggressive scepticism.
"Position critical! Hum. I suppose their treaties must be worth something," pursued Semingham. "Dennison, I can't be drained dry over this job."
Harry Dennison shook his head in a puzzled fashion.
"Carlin says it's all right," he remarked.
"Of course he does!" exclaimed Tom impatiently. "Two and two make five for him if Ruston says they do."
"Well, Tom, what's your advice?" asked Semingham.
"You must tell him to do nothing till he's seen you, or at least sent you full details of the position."
The two men nodded. Mrs. Dennison rose from her chair, walked to the window, and stood looking out.
"Loring just confirms what I thought," said Semingham.
"He says he must act at once," Harry reminded them; he was still wavering, and, as he spoke, he glanced uneasily at his wife; but there was nothing to show that she even heard the conversation.
"Oh, he hates referring to anybody," said Tom. "He's to have a free hand, and you're to pay the bill. That's his programme, and a very pretty one it is – for him."
Tom's animus was apparent, and Lord Semingham laughed gently.
"Still, you're right in substance," he conceded when the laugh was ended, and as he spoke he drew a sheet of notepaper towards him and took up a pen.
"We'd better settle just what to say," he observed. "Carlin will be back in half an hour, and we promised to have it ready for him. What you suggest seems all right, Loring."
Tom nodded. Harry Dennison stood stock still for an instant and then said, with a sigh,
"I suppose so. He'll be furious – and I hope to God we shan't lose the whole thing."
Lord Semingham's pen-point was in actual touch with the paper before him, when Mrs. Dennison suddenly turned round and faced them. She rested one hand on the window-sash, and held the other up in a gesture which demanded attention.
"Are you really going to back out now?" she asked in a very quiet voice, but with an intonation of contempt that made all the three men raise their heads with the jerk of startled surprise. Lord Semingham checked the movement of his pen, and leant back in his chair, looking at her. Her face was a little flushed and she was breathing quickly.
"My dear," said Harry Dennison very apologetically, "do you think you quite understand – ?"
But Tom Loring's patience was exhausted. His interview with Adela left him little reserve of toleration; and the discovery of another and even worse case of Rustomania utterly overpowered his discretion.
"Mrs. Dennison," he said, "wants us to deliver ourselves, bound hand and foot, to this fellow."
"Well, and if I do?" she demanded, turning on him. "Can't you even follow, when you've found a man who can lead?"
And then, conscious perhaps of having been goaded to an excess of warmth by Tom's open scorn, she turned her face away.
"Lead, yes! Lead us to ruin!" exclaimed Tom.
"You won't be ruined, anyhow," she retorted quickly, facing round on him again, reckless in her anger how she might wound him.
"Tom's anxious for us, Maggie," her husband reminded her, and he laid his hand on Tom Loring's shoulder.
Tom's excitement was not to be soothed.
"Why are we all to be his instruments?" he demanded angrily.
"I should be proud to be," she said haughtily.
Her husband smiled in an uneasy effort after nonchalance, and Lord Semingham shot a quick glance at her out of his observant eyes.
"I should be proud of a friend like you if I were Ruston," he said gently, hoping to smooth matters a little.
Mrs. Dennison ignored his attempt.
"Can't you see?" she asked. "Can't you see that he's a man to – to do things? It's enough for us if we can help him."
She had forgotten her embarrassment; she spoke half in contempt, half in entreaty, wholly in an earnest urgency, that made her unconscious of any strangeness in her zeal. Harry looked uncomfortable. Semingham with a sigh blew a cloud of smoke from his cigarette.
Tom Loring sat silent. He stretched out his legs to their full length, rested the nape of his neck on the chair-back, and stared up at the ceiling. His attitude eloquently and most rudely asserted folly – almost lunacy – in Mrs. Dennison. She noticed it and her eyes flashed, but she did not speak to him. She looked at Semingham and surprised an expression in his eyes that made her drop her own for an instant; she knew very well what he was thinking – what a man like him would think. But she recovered herself and met his glance boldly.
Harry Dennison sat down and slowly rubbed his brow with his handkerchief. Lord Semingham took up the pen and balanced it between his fingers. There was silence in the room for full three minutes. Then came a loud knock at the hall door.
"It's Carlin," said Harry Dennison.
No one else spoke, and for another moment there was silence. The steps of the butler and the visitor were already audible in the hall when Lord Semingham, with his own shrug and his own smile, as though nothing in the world were worth so much dispute or so much bitterness, said to Dennison,
"Hang it! Shall we chance it, Harry?"
Mrs. Dennison made one swift step forward towards him, her face all alight; but she stopped before she reached the table and turned to her husband. At the moment Carlin was announced. He entered with a rush of eagerness. Tom Loring did not move. Semingham wrote on his paper, —
"Use your discretion, but make every effort to keep down expenses. Wire progress."
"Will that do?" he asked, handing the paper to Harry Dennison and leaning back with a smile on his face; and, though he handed the paper to Harry, he looked at Mrs. Dennison.
Mrs. Dennison was standing by her husband now, her arm through his. As he read she read also. Then she took the paper from his yielding hand and came and bent over the table, shoulder to shoulder with Lord Semingham. Taking the pen from his fingers, she dipped it in the ink, and with
