The paragraph was not altogether an inch long, but it proved enough to make Mr. Forde turn as faint and sick as many a man brave enough and honest enough had turned before in that very office. In imagination he saw looming in the distance ruin and beggary. He heard the gates of St. Vedast Wharf close behind him for the last time. Things were worse with him, much worse than they had been when Mortomley's nephew came to say his uncle meant to go into liquidation, and Mr. Forde felt impelled once again to take his hat. "I wish I had left then," he muttered. If a house be tottering, the removal of even a single stone may hasten the impending catastrophe. As Mr. Forde believed, Mortomley was a most important stone in the edifice of his own safety, and yet even at that juncture it never occurred to him it was his own mad sledge-hammer blows had driven it so completely out of place that no one could ever hope to make it available at St. Vedast Wharf again. Really the manager was to be pitied. If there chanced to be one thing more than another on which he piqued himself, it was his genius for diplomacy, and, as Mr. Gibbons said, he had done a neat thing when he employed his own solicitor to do Mortomley's work. If everything could have been prevailed upon to work as he intended it should, Mr. Forde would have been comparatively at ease; but edged tools have sometimes a knack of cutting those who play with them, and already one of Mr. Forde's tools had inflicted upon him a nasty wound. "I will go round to Basinghall Street," he said almost aloud, as though some balm of Gilead might be extracted even from Salisbury House, and he went round to find Mr. Swanland out, Mr. Asherill urbane and unctuous as ever. Deriving little consolation from his unsatisfactory interview with the latter gentleman, he walked on to Kleinwort's office, only to find him absent also, and the time of his return uncertain. Then, because he was able to think of no other person to whom he could speak on the subject, he turned into Werner's counting-house. As usual, Mr. Werner was within and visible. "Have you seen the 'Times'?" asked Mr. Forde, after the first greetings were exchanged. "Yes," was the short reply. "Were you not surprised?" "I do not know. I suppose I was. I thought you would have expressed your wishes more clearly." "Clearly!" No italics and no number of interjections could convey an idea of the tone in which Mr. Forde uttered this word. "Why, sir, I told Benning as plainly as I could speak I wanted the matter kept out of the papers, and if that was not sufficiently explicit, I repeated the same thing to Swanland, and now just see the mess they have got me into." "What do your directors say?" "I have not seen any of them yet. What I shall say to them I cannot imagine." And Mr. Forde beat a dismal tattoo on the corner of the desk as he spoke.