But upstairs, in the prettiest room in Liverpool, Kate wrestled with Fate. She pictured the man that the mask singled out of the group: Red hair, a dogged jaw, ill-cut clothes, and, upon occasion, a man who used the language more fitted to an underpaid stevedore. She had overheard Carter discoursing to the factory at large that night of the false alarm at Mokki, when he chided the Portuguese and the factory boys in phrases learned from Swizzle-Stick Smith. Was this the man she had ever fancied for a husband? No, a thousand times no. She locked the group and the mask once more into its drawer, and went back to her cushions and a novel. There was still another great rubber company on the brink of flotation. This time the pugilistic Mr. Smith had procured for her the grant of the land, and had assured her that the King of Okky, thanks to his recent improvement in morals, would see that the title remained unchallenged. The proposition was, she honestly believed, commercially sound, but the risk lay in the British Public. Were they loaded up with rubber stock? That was the point to decide. So far she had not had a share of her companies underwritten, in spite of abundant and pressing offers. But here was an awkward question to decide: Should she insure this issue, or should she risk having it not taken up, and invite a fiasco? She tried with cold logic to reason out the arguments for and against, and to strike a balance between them. But for once her brain refused to act. Even the novel, which she read and did not absorb, did not offer her the necessary hint. It was an old trick of hers, this reading of a dozen chapters of weak fiction, to get an inspiration, and so far it had never failed her. She was an omnivorous novel reader. She went through quite two-thirds of the fiction brought out annually by British publishers, and could never, next morning, have passed the easiest examination in a novel she had read the night before. But all her clever business ideas were evolved when she was reading these paltry books. At last she could endure the vague things that oppressed her no longer. She dropped the book on the floor. And then she got up and went into the secretary's narrow room next door. She found cable forms and sat at a table. Then she wrote glibly enough this message. "_Burgoyne, Monk River, West Africa, Forward this to Cascaes Mokki special runner want you act our agent Las Palmas_ 2,400 _commence cable acceptance or refusal, O'Neill._" She counted up the words, laid down her pencil, and laughed. "At any rate," she said, "that will give one a chance. And George was fool enough to think that Mr. Cascaes was running after me. Oh, I have no patience with men who can't see further through the fog than that." CHAPTER XVIII CARTER MAKES A PURCHASE