"I bought half of it from her some time ago. She was badly hard up for a hundred pounds, and I let her have the money." He threw away his cigarette half-smoked, with a free gesture that seemed to imply that he was capable of parting with a hundred pounds just as easily. "How did she _get_ the option?" Edward Henry inquired, putting into the query all the innuendo of a man accustomed to look at great worldly affairs from the inside. "How did she get it? She got it from the late Lord Woldo. She was always very friendly with the late Lord Woldo, you know." Edward Henry nodded. "Why, she and the Countess of Chell are as thick as thieves! You know something about the countess down here, I reckon?" The Countess of Chell was the wife of the supreme local magnate. Edward Henry answered calmly, "We do." He was tempted to relate a unique adventure of his youth, when he had driven the countess to a public meeting in his mule-carriage; but sheer pride kept him silent. "I asked you for the figures," he added in a manner which requested Mr. Bryany to remember that he was the founder, chairman, and proprietor of the Five Towns Universal Thrift Club, one of the most successful business organisations in the Midlands. "Here they are," said Mr. Bryany, passing across the table a sheet of paper. And as Edward Henry studied them he could hear Mr. Bryany faintly cooing into his ear: "Of course Rose got the ground-rent reduced. And when I tell you that the demand for theatres in the West End far exceeds the supply, and that theatre rents are always going up; when I tell you that a theatre costing £25,000 to build can be let for £11,000 a year, and often £300 a week on a short term--" And he could hear the gas singing over his head; and also, unhappily, he could hear Dr. Stirling talking to his wife and saying to her that the bite was far more serious than it looked, and Nellie hoping very audibly that nothing had "happened" to him, her still absent husband. And then he could hear Mr. Bryany again: "When I tell you--" "When you tell me all this, Mr. Bryany," he interrupted with the ferocity which in the Five Towns is regarded as mere directness, "I wonder why the devil you want to sell your half of the option if you _do_ want to sell it. Do you want to sell it?" "To tell you the truth," said Mr. Bryany as if up to that moment he had told naught but lies, "I do." "Why?" "Oh, I’m always travelling about, you see. England one day, America the next." Apparently he had quickly abandoned the strictness of veracity. "All depends on the governor’s movements. I couldn’t keep a proper eye on an affair of that kind." Edward Henry laughed: "And could I?" "Chance for you to go a bit oftener to London," said Mr. Bryany, laughing too. Then, with extreme and convincing seriousness, "You’re the very man for a thing of that kind. And you know it." Edward Henry was not displeased by this flattery. "How much?"