expert in such matters." Storm said this with almost aggressive
self-confidence. One had to believe that he knew what he was talking
about; that his apparently mysterious past included the management of
hotels, and this instinctive if reluctant credence was a tribute to the
man's magnetic power. He did look the last person on earth to be a
hotel-keeper! Believing that he might have been one ought to have
destroyed the romance attached to him, but somehow it made the flame of
curiosity burn brighter.

"Don't you all think," he went on, "that the suggestor ought to have a
voice in the working out of the scheme--that is, if he has anything to
say worth hearing?"

"Seems to me this is a case for acts, not arguments," remarked Caspian.
"It isn't good advice but money that's needed at this stage."

"Exactly," said Storm. "The question is, how is it to be obtained? I
think it would be more advantageous to Mr. Moore and his daughter for a
small syndicate to be formed than for them to get the capital on a
mortgage. They are amateurs. They don't know how to run a hotel. They
might make a failure, and the mortgage could be called in----"

"I wouldn't do such a thing!" Caspian angrily cut him short. "That's why
I came forward--so they could have a friend rather than a business
man----"

"It turns out awkwardly sometimes, doing business with friends," said
Storm, giving the other a level look straight from eye to eye. So may a
cat look at a king. So may a steerage passenger look at a millionaire if
he isn't afraid. And apparently this one wasn't afraid, having only
other people's axes to grind, not his own. "Forming a company or
syndicate, Mr. and Miss Moore would have shares in the business, given
them for what they could put into it: their historic place and beautiful
house. Mrs. Shuster would take up a large group of shares, and would, I
understand, become one of the first guests of the hotel, to show her
confidence in the scheme. Isn't that the case, Mrs. Shuster?"

"Oh, _yes_!" she agreed. All the man's magnetic influence--temporarily
dimmed by her old friend Ed in the motor car--seemed to rush over her
again in a warm wave.

"Mr. Caspian is of course free to join the syndicate," continued the S.
M. "But he, too, is an amateur. He may know how to live well in hotels,
he doesn't know how to run them well."

"I'm not a hotel-keeper, thank heaven, if that's what you mean!" said
Caspian. "But I happen to have money."