Page:The Firm of Gridlestone (1890).djvu/93

Rh a crowd; but that demned commercial instinct will show itself. If he went to heaven he'd start an agency for harps and crowns. Did I tell you what the Honourable Jack Gibbs said to me at the club? Ged, he let me have it straight! 'Buck,' he said, 'I don't mind you. You're one o' the right sort when all's said and done, but if you ever inthroduce such a chap as that to me again, I'll cut you as well as him for the future.' I'd inthroduced them to put the young spalpeen in a good humour, for, being short, as ye know, I thought it might be necessary to negotiate a loan from him."

"Vat did you say his name vas?" Von Baumser asked suddenly.

"Girdlestone."

"Is his father a Kauffmann?"

"What the divil is a Kauffmann?" the major asked impatiently. "Is it a merchant you mean?"

"Ah, a merchant. One who trades with the Afrikaner?"

"The same."

Von Baumser took a bulky pocket-book from his inside pocket, and scanned a long list of names therein. "Ah, it is the same," he cried at last triumphantly, shutting up the book and replacing it. "Girdlestone and Co., African kauf—dat is, merchants—Fenchurch Street, City."

"Those are they."

"And you say dey are rich?"

"Yes."

"Very rich?"

"Yes."

The major began to think that his companion had been imbibing in his absence, for there was an unfathomable smile upon his face, and his red beard and towsy hair seemed to bristle from some internal excitement.

"Very rich! Ho, ho! Very rich!" he laughed. "I know dem; not as friends, Gott bewahre! but I know dem and their affairs."

"What are you driving at? Let's have it. Out with it, man."