Page:Robert Barr - Lord Stranleigh Philanthropist.djvu/195

 minutes each day; that is, if I have to record your bodily exertions and your brilliant remarks. Nothing can happen at this fag-end of creation."

Stranleigh went on calmly, unheeding all innuendo:

"Every letter I dictate must be done in duplicate, so that I may possess exact impressions of all my correspondence. This eyrie is going to be the busiest spot in the Empire, and for the next two or three months much more important than London."

"Important to whom, my lord?"

"Never mind; yours not to make reply, yours not to reason why, yours but to do your noble six hundred words every fifteen minutes on that machine. Now, Blake, your first letter will be a telegram, and your first telegram a 'phone call. Get into communication with whatever telegraph office or telephone wire connects, and send the solicitors a message to this effect. Thank them for their promptness in buying Lannacombe. Inform them how to communicate with me by telegraph or telephone. Ask them to discover how many coastguard stations are for sale. Instruct them to purchase for me all that are in the market. If any have been sold already to private persons the solicitors must get in touch with those private owners, and either buy or rent for the summer the said coastguard stations."