simply, it seems for advertising purposes. They were mere names.
He was totally unable to organise anything, to promote any sort of
enterprise if it were only for the purpose of juggling with the shares.
At that time he could have had for the asking any number of Dukes,
retired Generals, active M.P.'s, ex-ambassadors and so on as Directors
to sit at the wildest boards of his invention. But he never tried. He
had no real imagination. All he could do was to publish more
advertisements and open more branch offices of the Thrift and
Independence, of The Orb, of The Sceptre, for the receipt of deposits;
first in this town, then in that town, north and south--everywhere where
he could find suitable premises at a moderate rent. For this was the
great characteristic of the management. Modesty, moderation,
simplicity. Neither The Orb nor The Sceptre nor yet their parent the
Thrift and Independence had built for themselves the usual palaces. For
this abstention they were praised in silly public prints as illustrating
in their management the principle of Thrift for which they were founded.
The fact is that de Barral simply didn't think of it. Of course he had
soon moved from Vauxhall Bridge Road. He knew enough for that. What he
got hold of next was an old; enormous, rat-infested brick house in a
small street off the Strand. Strangers were taken in front of the
meanest possible, begrimed, yellowy, flat brick wall, with two rows of
unadorned window-holes one above the other, and were exhorted with bated
breath to behold and admire the simplicity of the head-quarters of the
great financial force of the day. The word thrift perched right up on
the roof in giant gilt letters, and two enormous shield-like
brass-plates curved round the corners on each side of the doorway were
the only shining spots in de Barral's business outfit. Nobody knew what
operations were carried on inside except this--that if you walked in and
tendered your money over the counter it would be calmly taken from you
by somebody who would give you a printed receipt. That and no more. It
appears that such knowledge is irresistible. People went in and
tendered; and once it was taken from their hands their money was more
irretrievably gone from them than if they had thrown it into the sea.
This then, and nothing else was being carried on in there...

"Come, Marlow," I said, "you exaggerate surely--if only by your way of
putting things. It's too startli