onson was as dark as a
Moor, and no physical resemblance of features or form suggested itself
to the comparing eye, yet Thorpe even now, when they stood brusquely
silent before him, with their carefully-brushed hats pulled down over
their eyes, stuck to it in his own mind that it was hard to tell them
apart. To the end, there was something impersonal in his feeling toward
them. They, for their part, coldly abstained from exhibiting a sign of
feeling about him, good, bad, or indifferent.

It was the man with the fair hair and little curly flaxen beard who
spoke: "How do you do! I understand that we can buy eight thousand five
hundred Rubber Consols from you at 'twenty-three.'"

"No--twenty-five," replied Thorpe.

The dark man spoke: "The jobbers' price is twenty-three."

"To carry over--yes," Thorpe answered. "But to buy it is twenty-five."

The two sons of the race which invented mental arithmetic exchanged an
alert glance, and looked at the floor for an engrossed instant.

"I don't mind telling you," Thorpe interposed upon their silence, "I put
on that extra two pounds because you got up that story about applying to
the Stock Exchange Committee on a charge of fraud."

"We didn't get up any story," said Rostocker, curtly.

"You tried to plant it on us," Aronson declared.

"One of your own Directors put it about. I thought it was a fake at the
time."

This view of the episode took Thorpe by surprise. As it seemed, in
passing, to involve a compliment to his own strategic powers, he
accepted it without comment. "Well--it is twenty-five, anyway," he told
them, with firmness.

"Twenty-four," suggested Aronson, after another momentary pause.

"Not a shilling less than twenty-five," Thorpe insisted, with quiet
doggedness.

"We can always pay our creditors and let you whistle," Rostocker
reminded him, laconically.

"You can do anything you like," was the reply, "except buy Rubber
Consols under twenty-five. It doesn't matter a fig to me whether you go
bankrupt or not. It would suit me as well to have you two 'hammered' as
to take your money." Upon the spur of a sudden thought he drew out his
watch. "In just two minutes' time to a tick, the price will be thirty."

"Let's be 'hammered' then!" said Aronson to his companion, with
simulated impulsiveness.

Rostocker was the older and stronger man, and when at last he spoke it
was with the decision of one in authority. "It is your game," he
said, with grave impertu