'd like to bash his
face!"

"Well," I said, "what's to be done?"

"Keep going," said my uncle.

"I'll smash Boom yet," he said, with sudden savagery.

"Nothing else?" I asked.

"We got to keep going. There's a scare on. Did you notice the rooms?
Half the people out there this morning are reporters. And if I talk they
touch it up!... They didn't used to touch things up! Now they put in
character touches--insulting you. Don't know what journalism's coming
to. It's all Boom's doing."

He cursed Lord Boom with considerable imaginative vigour.

"Well," said I, "what can he do?"

"Shove us up against time, George; make money tight for us. We been
handling a lot of money--and he tightens us up."

"We're sound?"

"Oh, we're sound, George. Trust me for that! But all the same--There's
such a lot of imagination in these things.... We're sound enough. That's
not it."

He blew. "Damn Boom!" he said, and his eyes over his glasses met mine
defiantly.

"We can't, I suppose, run close hauled for a bitstop expenditure?"

"Where?"

"Well,--Crest Hill"

"What!" he shouted. "Me stop Crest Hill for Boom!" He waved a fist as if
to hit his inkpot, and controlled himself with difficulty. He spoke at
last in a reasonable voice. "If I did," he said, "he'd kick up a fuss.
It's no good, even if I wanted to. Everybody's watching the place. If I
was to stop building we'd be down in a week."

He had an idea. "I wish I could do something to start a strike or
something. No such luck. Treat those workmen a sight too well. No, sink
or swim, Crest Hill goes on until we're under water."

I began to ask questions and irritated him instantly.

"Oh, dash these explanations, George!" he cried; "You only make things
look rottener than they are. It's your way. It isn't a case of figures.
We're all right--there's only one thing we got to do."

"Yes?"

"Show value, George. That's where this quap comes in; that's why I fell
in so readily with what you brought to me week before last. Here we are,
we got our option on the perfect filament, and all we want's canadium.
Nobody knows there's more canadium in the world than will go on the
edge of a sixpence except me and you. Nobody has an idee the perfect
filament's more than just a bit of theorising. Fifty tons of quap and
we'd turn that bit of theorising into something. We'd make the lamp
trade sit on its tail and howl. We'd put Ediswan and all of 'em into a
parcel without last year's trouser