Page:Barr--Stranleighs millions.djvu/74

62 you are after. In the face of such flattery, Peter, I am helpless."

"Thanks, Stranleigh. Then may I count on your assistance?"

"It's very likely. I always was a heedless person, but I hope you are not entering into a contest with Wall Street. They tell me that the men of that thoroughfare are much more than a match for our unsophisticated farmers of the London Stock Exchange. I've no wish to get into a scrimmage with them."

"Why, you've already been in a scrimmage with them, and beat them hands down."

"When?"

"When Wall Street tried to corner the gold of the world."

"Oh, that was no scrimmage. That was a massacre. There is nothing in such a contest to make a man feel proud of himself. I defeated them not by mental acumen, but through the brutal weight of the metal I was lucky enough at that moment to possess. I simply dumped a train-load of ingots on their backs, and my accumulation of so many tons of gold at the psychological time was merely raw luck. It wasn't playing the game, and I felt myself a coward all the time I was doing it. It seemed to be taking such a mean advantage of Wall Street. If I met any denizen of that thoroughfare again I should like the fight to be man to man and steel to steel, but in that case, although we might indulge