Page:Edgar Jepson--the four philanthropists.djvu/285

Rh "Never!" cried Chelubai. "How?"

"We had agreed to begin unloading our holdings in Golden Banks on the 2d, and go on unloading slowly till the 10th. Knowing that I had to be in Manchester on the 1st, he instructed his brokers to sell on that afternoon, and sell hard, and while I was in the train on my way back to town, the market was being knocked to pieces—to pieces! When I looked at the evening paper you could have knocked me down with a feather—and I'm a heavy man. And he was my friend!"

"Disgraceful! Scandalous! " said Chelubai, with warm sympathy. "What did you lose?"

"Lose?" said the King of Finance, and a tear stood in his eye, "every penny of sixteen thousand pounds! Why, when I began to sell on the morning of the 2d, it was as much as I could do to save myself from loss on what I originally paid for the shares. I did not clear seventy pounds on them."

"Um. Do you think he suspected anything?" said Chelubai.

"How could he?"

"Well, he knew what happened to Pudleigh."

"But that was quite different! He was in the whole of that business with me—barring that he didn't know that Pudleigh was out of the way. We did not sell a share before the day agreed upon; and even then when Pudleigh did not turn up in the morning, I insisted—yes, I insisted on giving