But I stand in and take the whole risk--the whole five
million risk--and give you securities on my ships that bears looking
into with a microscope."

Sir Francis gasped his admiration of the daring offer.

"That's pluck!" he exclaimed.

"Well, what do you say? Are you agreeable, for one?"

"Certainly--certainly!"

"Then will you bring St Aubyn and Carleton-Wingate here, and get their
consent? Say to-morrow morning?"

"That's very short notice."

"You can get them on the telephone. If they're here to-morrow morning
and consent--there ought to be no difficulty about that--you three
Directors can sick the lawyers on to me at once and fix up the security
deeds in a day or so."

"You ought to have been born an Englishman!" said the baronet
admiringly.

"One point occurs to me. Let's keep this matter close until the
prospectus is actually launched. I don't want any Stock Exchange
'wreckers!' trying to stick a knife into my back. You know some of their
tricks?"

"Certainly--certainly!"

"I don't think I'd even mention it to your daughter. Women--even the
best of them--can't help talking."

"Women are not meant for business," agreed the baronet sententiously.

CHAPTER XXXIII

LARSSEN'S APPEAL

In pursuance of his second move, Larssen had to see Miss Verney. To
write to her would probably be fruitless waste of time; and it was
emphatically not the kind of interview to delegate to a subordinate. He
had to seek her in person.

It was curious to reflect that, in this tangle of four lives, the
balance of power had shifted successively from one to the other. At
first it was with Matheson. A letter of his had brought the shipowner
hastening to Paris to see him. Later, it was Larssen who sat still and
Matheson who hurried to find him. Later again, it was Olive who held
decision between the two men. And now Elaine.

As soon as he had settled the underwriting affair with Sir Francis and
his two co-Directors, Larssen went straight to Wiesbaden to the surgical
home, and had his card sent in to Elaine.

Elaine received him in the garden of the home, under the soft shade of a
spreading linden, where she had been chatting with another patient. Near
by, a laburnum drooped in shower of gold over a bush of delicate white
guelder-rose as Zeus over Danae. Upon the wall of the home wistaria hung
her pastel-shaded pendants of flower, like the notes of some beautiful
melody, sweet and sad, along the giant staves of h