at
the summons of Paul Spinner; and the visit included conversations not
only with Paul, but with Smathe and Smathe, the solicitors, and with a
firm of stockbrokers. Paul handed over to his crony saleable securities,
chiefly in the shape of scrip of the greatest oil-combine and its
subsidiaries, for a vast amount, and advised Mr. Prohack to hold on to
them, as, owing to the present depression due to the imminence of a
great strike, they were likely to be "marked higher" before Mr. Prohack
was much older. Mr. Prohack declined the advice, and he also declined
the advice of solicitors and stockbrokers, who were both full of wisdom
and of devices for increasing capital values. What these firms knew
about the future, and about the consequences of causes and about "the
psychology of the markets" astounded the simple Terror of the
departments; and it was probably unanswerable. But, being full of
riches, Mr. Prohack did not trouble to answer it; he merely swept it
away with a tyrannical and impatient gesture, which gesture somehow
mysteriously established him at once as a great authority on the art of
investment.

"Now listen to me," said he imperiously, and the manipulators of shares
listened, recalling to themselves that Mr. Prohack had been a Treasury
official for over twenty years and must therefore be worth
hearing--although the manipulators commonly spent many hours a week in
asserting, in the press and elsewhere, that Treasury officials
comprehended naught of finance. "Now listen to me. I don't care a hang
about my capital. It may decrease or increase, and I shan't care. All I
care for is my interest. I want to be absolutely sure that my interest
will tumble automatically into my bank on fixed dates. No other
consideration touches me. I'm not a gambler. I'm not a usurer.
Industrial development leaves me cold, and if I should ever feel any
desire to knit the Empire closer together I'll try to do it without
making a profit out of it. At the moment all I'm after is certain, sure,
fixed interest. Hence--Government securities, British Government or
Colonial! Britain is of course rotten to the core, always was, always
will be. Still, I'll take my chances. I'm infernally insular where
investment is concerned. There's one thing to be said about the British
Empire--you do know where you are in it. And I don't mind some municipal
stocks. I even want some. I can conceive the smash-up of the British
Empire, but I cannot conceive M