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116 your project. If you choose to render it worth my while, I'll induce my father and his directors to amalgamate. If you don't, I won't. That's the long and the short of it!'

Charles looked at him admiringly.

'Young man,' he said, 'you're deep, very deep—for your age. Is this candour—or deception? Do you mean what you say? Or do you know some reason why it suits your father's book to amalgamate as well as it suits mine? And are you trying to keep it from me?' He fingered his chin. 'If I only knew that,' he went on, 'I should know how to deal with you.'

Young Granton smiled again. 'You're a financier, Sir Charles,' he answered. 'I wonder, at your time of life, you should pause to ask another financier whether he's trying to fill his own pocket—or his father's. Whatever is my father's goes to his eldest son—and I am his youngest.'

'You are right as to general principles,' Sir Charles replied, quite affectionately. 'Most sound and sensible. But how do I know you haven't bargained already in the same way with your father? You may have settled with him, and be trying to diddle me.'

The young man assumed a most candid air. 'Look here,' he said, leaning forward. 'I offer you this chance. Take it or leave it. Do you wish to purchase my aid for this amalgamation by a moderate commission on the net value of my father's option to yourself—which I know approximately?'