He paused a moment, more for breath than for anything else, for he had been speaking very rapidly; and in the terrified silence round him Bingham was heard muttering as though in reply to some whispered question: “You leave him _alone_! It may be unconventional, but....” “The question is, ladies and gentlemen, at what price have you bought ... on the average? Many of you are country parsons, many of you ladies with far more money than you have knowledge what to do with it. Not a few of you stock-brokers--an exceptionally inexperienced class of men--you are a fair average lot of British investors, and I ask _at what price did you buy?_” He looked at them fixedly for a few moments, then pulling out a scrap of paper he read it briefly: “‘From figures that have been laid before me I find that the average price at which the present shareholders bought was eight pounds sixteen shillings and a few pence,’” and then added “We’ll call it eight pounds. Always be on the Conservative side.” At this remark, which was supposed to contain a political jest, two old ladies in the second row tittered, but finding themselves alone, stopped tittering. “I say take it at eight pounds. Well, that four million of stock stands for thirty-two million pounds. _Thirty-two million pounds!_” he said with a rising voice--“THIRTY-TWO MILLION POUNDS!” he roared,--banging the table with his fist and leaning forward with a determined jowl.... “And what’s left of it? _Nothing!_” There was another dead silence at the end of this striking phrase, and Bingham was again heard to mutter: “You leave him _alone_; he knows what he’s at!” A certain uneasy shuffling of feet behind him caused Repton to turn his head snappishly, then he looked round again and resumed his great oration. “I say _nothing_.... Oh! I know there are some of you stupid enough to think that you have still got sixteen and thruppence a share. That was the quotation in the paper this morning. Eugh!” he sniffed sardonically, “You try and _sell_ at that and you’ll soon find what you’ve got! No! you haven’t even got that sixteen and thruppence. You haven’t got two shillings in the pound for what you put in. You’ve got nothing! nothing! nothing!! Put that in your pipes and smoke it....” “And so, gentlemen,” he added, leaning his body backwards and putting his thumbs into his waistcoat, “the business before us is how to get out of this hole. There are perhaps some of you,” he went on, frowning intellectually, “there are perhaps some of you who imagine that the Government is going to buy. Well, I’m a member of the Government and I can tell you they are _not_.” At this appalling remark the elements of revolution upon the platform all but exploded, but the solid weight of Bingham was still there, and if I may hint at a phrase with which the reader is already familiar, he suggested that Sir Charles knew what he was about and should be let _alone_.