“Shelf pulled the check-string, and his brougham stopped against the kerb. ‘Mr. Fairfax,’ said he, ‘your attitude pains me. Let us part here for the time, and let us both pray that when next we meet you may be in a more Christian mind.’ Whereupon out I stepped, and came along here to Park Lane. Amy dear, I don’t like the look of things at all. The other business, the ‘Oceanic Steam Transport Company,’ as it is called officially, is by no means in a healthy condition, and, remembering that, it seems to me that starting this new company is something very nearly approaching a swindle. I believe that Theodore Shelf is finding out that he is in low water, and is getting desperate.” “I don’t know about the last,” replied the girl, thoughtfully; “but as for being in low water, there I think you are wrong. Every week here they seem to spend more money than they did the week before. Mrs. Shelf was at a picture sale yesterday, and bought two old masters at four thousand guineas apiece, and it isn’t likely she’d throw away that sum on what is absolutely and entirely a luxury unless money were pretty plentiful with her.” “It can’t go on at this pace,” said Fairfax. “I know what the limits of the business are, and I’m certain it can’t stand the drain on them which all this gorgeousness must entail. Last year the profits were almost nil, and yet did Mrs. Shelf retrench at all? Not a bit. She goes in for more and more display every week she lives. This pace must bring about a wreck, and if the ‘Oceanic Steam Transport Company’ goes down, it is an absolute certainty that this new ‘Brothers Company’ will be swamped with it.” “And then?” “More than a thousand poor people, for the most of them old, will find that the savings of a lifetime have vanished into nothingness before their eyes. It is an awful thing even to think such a suspicion against a man; but the idea is growing upon me, and Theodore Shelf saw what I thought when he showed me out of his brougham this afternoon.” “Then what,” asked the girl in a horrified whisper, “will you do?” “Nothing. What can I do? To breathe a word of it aloud would be a libel; and if I did not get sent to jail, they would pack me off to Hanwell as a malicious madman. Shelf’s name is as good as a banknote in the City this day, and, for everybody’s sake, I trust that I have wronged him foully, and that it may always continue so. But, Amy dear, I have a heavy foreboding on me that in less than half a year’s time there will be a mob of wretched people shooting themselves or going to the workhouse because he has ruined them, and they haven’t the pluck or the thews left to commence life afresh.” CHAPTER XVI. FOR THE BIRTHDAY LIST.