And the little man never turned a hair! “That
will be perfectly satisfactory,” he said.
“I will attend to it at once.” And
the other’s heart gave a great leap.
And sure enough, the next morning’s mail brought
the money, in the shape of a cashier’s cheque
from one of the big banks. Montague deposited
it to his own account, and felt that the city was his!
And so he flung himself into the work. He went
to his office every day, and he shut himself up in
his own rooms in the evening. Mrs. Winnie was
in despair because he would not come and learn bridge,
and Mrs. Vivie Patton sought him in vain for a week-end
party. He could not exactly say that while the
others slept he was toiling upward in the night, for
the others did not sleep in the night; but he could
say that while they were feasting and dancing, he was
delving into insurance law. Oliver argued in vain
to make him realize that he could not live for ever
upon one client; and that it was as important for
a lawyer to be a social light as to win his first
big case. Montague was so absorbed that he even
failed to be thrilled when one morning he opened an
invitation envelope, and read the fateful legend:
“Mrs. Devon requests the honour of your company”—telling
him that he had “passed” on that critical
examination morning, and that he was definitely and
irrevocably in Society!
Montague was now a capitalist, and therefore a keeper
of the gates of opportunity. It seemed as though
the seekers for admission must have had some occult
way of finding it out; almost immediately they began
to lay siege to him.
About a week after his cheque arrived, Major Thorne,
whom he had met the first evening at the Loyal Legion,
called him up and asked to see him; and he came to
Montague’s room that evening, and after chatting
awhile about old times, proceeded to unfold a business
proposition. It seemed that the Major had a grandson,
a young mechanical engineer, who had been labouring
for a couple of years at a very important invention,
a device for loading coal upon steamships and weighing
it automatically in the process. It was a very
complicated problem, needless to say, but it had been
solved successfully, and patents had been applied
for, and a working model constructed. But it
had proved unexpectedly difficult to interest the
officials of the great steamship companies in the device.
There was no doubt about the practicability of the
machine, or the economies it would effect; but the
officials raised trivial objections, and caused delays,
and offered prices that were ridiculously inadequate.
So the young inventor had conceived the idea of organizing
a company to manufacture the machines, and rent them
upon a royalty. “I didn’t know whether
you would have any money,” said Major Thorne,
“—but I thought you might be in touch
with others who could be got to look into the matter.
There is a fortune in it for those who take it up.”
