"Yes," Rupert assented, waiting his opportunity to make the communication he had been over-persuaded to convey all by himself into the enemy's camp. "Anything new?" continued Mr. Forde. "One thing, which I fear it will not much please you to hear," was the reply. Mr. Forde looked up from the purposeless tracings he had resumed after the first greetings were over. He looked up, his face darkening with the approach of one of those tempests of passion Rupert, as well as every other person who chanced to be unpleasantly connected with the General Chemical Company's Manager, had felt sweep over him. Well, it was all nearly at an end. He had stood many a cannonade without flinching, and another broadside could not much matter. "I have come to tell you," he went on hurriedly, without giving the other time to speak, "that Mr. Mortomley cannot go on any longer. He must call a meeting of his creditors." Holding the arms of his chair with both hands, Mr. Forde rose, gasping, literally gasping with rage. "Where is he now?" he asked hoarsely. His voice was so strange and choked, Rupert could scarcely have recognized it. "He is at his solicitor's." "The villain, the cowardly unprincipled vagabond--the thief--the cur; but I won't stay to face my directors over it. I won't stand between him and them. I will send in my resignation within the hour. He has ruined me." And having delivered himself of this sentence in a _crescendo_ of fury, Mr. Forde took his hat, thrust it down over his forehead, and walked out of the office. "Well, that is one way of cutting the knot, certainly," thought Rupert, who was, by the manager's move, left standing in the middle of the new carpet more utterly astounded than he had ever before been in the whole course of his life. "I may as well go too," he thought, after a minute's consideration; and he was moving towards the door with this intention, when Mr. Forde came back again, took off his hat, flung himself into his chair, and asked-- "Now, what is the meaning of all this?" CHAPTER XI. RUPERT SPEAKS VERY PLAINLY. Having made up his mind to place the state of his affairs before his creditors, Mr. Mortomley decided to break the news to Mr. Forde in person. This intention, however, was abandoned at the advice of a very shrewd individual who, happening to meet the "conspirators," as he facetiously styled Rupert and his uncle, in the City, stopped to shake hands and inquired if there was "anything fresh." Whereupon as he happened to be a creditor, and one who had followed with some interest the spectacle of Mortomley slipping off _terra firma_ into hitherto unknown water, which grew deeper and deeper at every effort he made to get out of it, Rupert told him in so many words what they meant to do and whither they were bound.