Page:Barr--Stranleighs millions.djvu/316

304 ing the hotel and the villas. The moment they are finished you can mortgage them for forty thousand.'

"‘No, you can't,' said Sir Phillip.

"‘When it is known that the Great Southern Railway takes an interest in this place, you will meet no difficulty at all. You are ignoring the price of the land. We will take it for granted that you have built economically and well. Very good. There is the land underneath your houses, right in the centre of your town, which, before many years, will be of enormous value. Besides, we don't need to discuss that question, because I'll undertake to find you a company that will be only too glad to lend its money on such security.’"

"So you built the hotel and the houses, Peter, and then he was unable to find you such a company?"

"I wish to goodness he had been. He found us the forty thousand pounds at once, then on that expenditure he found us thirty thousand, and when those houses were built, twenty thousand, and ten thousand. Thus we had, as he had stated, a hundred and fifty thousand pound town with an expenditure of only fifty thousand."

"By Jove! And the man kept his word to you throughout?"

"Yes."

"Well, I confess I don't see where the swindle comes in, and his plan of making fifty thousand