“Well, Mr. Mackeller, that is just the question I have been asking myself. I suppose I rather took to him, and in spite of my determination not to, I became interested in the story he told me. I think your seven syndicate men must be rather exceptional, are they not?” “No. I am exceptional in allowing myself to be caught like a schoolboy.” “I am quite unversed in the ways of the city, Mr. Mackeller, and I should like to know the _modus operandi_ of a case like this. Are your seven men personally selling their stock?” “How do you mean personally? They don’t go on the market and trade, of course.” “Then they must employ some one else?” “Oh, they are employing a score of brokers, all offering the shares with no takers.” “Do you know these brokers, Mr. Mackeller?” “Every man jack of them.” “Are they enemies of yours?” “There is neither enmity nor friendship in the city, Lord Stranleigh.” “Your most intimate acquaintance, then, would smash you up all in the way of business?” “Of course.” “What a den of wild beasts you are!” “Yes, I have long thought so, and, indeed, with this transaction I had intended to withdraw from the business and settle on my farm. You see, I did not bring up my son--he’s the only boy I have--to this business, but unluckily I got nipped just at the moment I intended to stop, as is so often the case. I expected that my holding in this mine would leave me not only well off, but rich, for I have the utmost confidence in my son’s report, and my certainty of a fortune caused me to relax my natural caution at exactly the moment when I should have been most wide awake.” “Do you think the five thousand pounds will clear you?” “I don’t know. There’s been a panic among those whom I induced to go in with me on this deal, but if I say it myself, my reputation is good, and I think if I can hold on for a week or two longer, the tide will turn. All my life I have endeavored to conduct this business strictly on a truth-telling plan, and that is bound to tell in my favor the moment the panic ceases.” “Do you mean, then, Mr. Mackeller, that the hammering of this mine has caused a financial panic in the city?” “Oh, no, no! When I refer to a panic, I mean only among those few that have gone in with me; that believed me when I told them this was one of the best things I ever had offered to me. The Red Shallows flotation is too small an affair to cause even a flutter in the city, yet it threatens to grind me to pieces.” “There are, you say, twenty stockbrokers selling these shares, and you know their names. Where do they offer the shares?” “On the Stock Exchange, in their offices, in the street, anywhere.” “Is there another twenty stockbrokers whom you could trust?” “Yes.” “Suppose at twelve o’clock to-day, exactly to the minute, your twenty went to the offices of the other twenty, would they find in those offices some one to sell them this stock?” “Yes.” “Even if the principal were absent?” “Yes.”