They sat grouped round a table of fumed oak, on which a dainty printed card begged members to pay for the refreshments of their guests, while above them hung a very sensible admonition against the bestowal of gratuities upon the domestics of these regal rooms. They sat for a full quarter of an hour, talking in sparse and careless sentences, now of politics, now of some book, and each from time to time would look up cheerfully and say that they should be getting to business. Already had Mr Burden professed his interest in the architecture of the club (for they had drifted on to that topic), when Mr Barnett replied, quite suddenly, that they had but one thing to settle that day, and that thing was the sum which they four must syndicate before the promotion was entered upon. He waited for no comment, but continued with equal abruptness, saying that, so far as he could see, a hundred thousand pounds between them would command all that was required for the security of their further steps; and, when he had said this, he sat silently, with his great hands upon his great knees, looking down upon the floor at his feet. Lord Benthorpe had the advantage of Mr Barnett in a wider knowledge of the world, and, from his Parliamentary training, a kind of subdued fluency. Mr Barnett had brought out the sum of money almost brutally. He had spoken rather slowly, choosing his words, as he always did. It was a necessity for him, if he was to avoid the slight foreign accent and the suspicion of foreign idiom, which even so he could not quite eliminate. After that hard and broken phrasing, it was a relief to hear Lord Benthorpe. His amiable mouth lay open between each phrase, his eyes roved from one object to another around the room; he sat, indeed, too far from the table to relieve upon it the appetite for movement which pursued his fingers, but he twisted them in and out by way of pastime during his discourse. “I think,” he said, in a thin voice, well suited to dialectic, “I think the sum is large ... larger perhaps than is necessary. In theory, as it were, there is very little needed.... I know one must always have a platform, as it were ... we shall have initial expenses, so to speak ... but....” And then the voice of Lord Benthorpe died away. Mr Harbury joined in with a more definite remark: “If anything the sum should be greater.” He said it with the decision and simplicity common to men of his type when they discuss a great financial matter. They are in daily contact with these things, and they speak of them as you and I speak of a road with which we are familiar, or of any of the common actions of life. He continued: