about this to your principals, but I hope they don't stop with
laying down concrete floors. Of course, money for the property is the
chief thing we want, but we do want factories and the employment of
labour, and the sooner the better. This fellow--Reynolds, he said his
name was--pays up for the property all right, has that concrete floor
prepared, and clears off."

"Raising the money to build, perhaps," Norgate remarked. "I don't think
there's any secret about my people's intentions. They are going to build
factories for the manufacture of crockery."

The agent brightened up.

"Well, that's a new industry, anyway. Crockery, eh?"

"It's a big German firm in Cannon Street," Norgate explained. "They are
going to make the stuff here. That ought to be better for our people."

The young man nodded.

"I expect they're afraid of tariff reform," he suggested. "Those Germans
see a long way ahead sometimes."

"I am beginning to believe that they do," Norgate assented, as he stepped
into the taxi.

CHAPTER XXXIII

Norgate walked into the club rather late that afternoon. Selingman and
Prince Lenemaur were talking together in the little drawing-room. They
called him in, and a few minutes later the Prince took his leave.

"Well, that's all arranged," Norgate reported. "I have bought the three
sites. There was only one thing the fellow down at Golder's Hill was
anxious about."

"And that?"

"He hoped you weren't just going to put down a concrete floor and then
shut the place up."

Mr. Selingman's amiable imperturbability was for once disturbed.

"What did the fellow mean?" he enquired.

"Haven't an idea," Norgate replied, "but he made me stand on a pile of
bricks and look at a strip of land which some one else had bought upon a
hill close by. I suppose they want the factories built as quickly as
possible, and work-people around the place."

"I shall have two hundred men at work to-morrow morning," Selingman
remarked. "If that agent had not been a very ignorant person, he would
have known that a concrete floor is a necessity to any factory where
heavy machinery is used."

"Is it?" Norgate asked simply.

"Any other question?" Selingman demanded.

"None at all."

"Then we will go and play bridge."

They cut into the same rubber. Selingman, however, was not at first
entirely himself. He played his cards in silence, and he once very nearly
revoked. Mrs. Benedek took him to task.

"Dear man," she said,