Chapter XIX. Self or Bearer - Page 2

safe as houses. He could go to bed now, and drop off like a child; having arranged before he went to make Guy Waring his cat's paw, and turn this sad stroke of ill-luck in the end to his own ultimate greater and wider advantage.

And he was quite right too. He did sleep as he expected. Next morning he woke in a very good humour, and proceeded at once to Guy Waring's rooms the moment after breakfast.

He found Guy, as he expected, in a tumult of excitement, having only just that moment received by post the final call for the Rio Negro capital.

When other men are excited the wise man takes care to be perfectly calm. Montague Nevitt was calm under this crushing blow. He pointed out blandly that everything would yet go well. All was not lost. They had other irons in the fire. And even the Rio Negros themselves were not an absolute failure. The diamonds, the diamonds themselves, he insisted, were still there, and the sapphires also. They studded the soil, they were to be had for the picking. Every bit of their money would come back to them in the end. It was a question of meeting an immediate emergency only.

"But I haven't three thousand pounds in the world to meet it with," Guy exclaimed in despair. "I shall be ruined, of course. I don't mind about that; but I never shall be able to make good my liabilities!"

Nevitt lighted a cigarette with a philosophical smile. The hotter Guy waxed, the faster did he cool down.

"Neither have I, my dear boy," he said, in his most careless voice, puffing out rings of smoke in the interval between his clauses; "but I don't, therefore, go mad. I don't tear my hair over it; though, to be sure, I'm a deal worse off than you. My position's at stake. If Drummonds were to hear of it--sack--sack instanter. As to making yourself responsible for what you don't possess, that's simply speculation. Everybody on the Stock Exchange always does it. If they didn't there'd be no such thing as enterprise at all. You can't make a fortune by risking a ha'penny."

"But what am I to do?" Guy cried wildly. "However am I to raise three thousand pounds? I should be ashamed to let Cyril know I'd defaulted like this. If I can't find the money I shall go mad or kill myself."

Montague Nevitt played him gently, as an experienced angler plays a plunging trout, before proceeding to land him. At last, after offering Guy much sympathetic advice, and suggesting several intentionally feeble schemes, only to quash them instantly, he observed with a certain apologetic air of unobtrusive friendliness, "Well, if the worst comes to the worst, you've one thing to fall back upon: There's that six-thousand, of course, coming in by-and-by from the unknown benefactor."

Guy flung himself down in his easy-chair, with a look of utter despondency upon his handsome face. "But I promised