“And,” said Hallam, “you would be ready to pay for it?”

Deringham bent his head.  “Yes.  To a moderate extent.”

Hallam sat silent for a time, and then looked up with a glint in his beady eyes.  “It could be done.  Well, I don’t want him to find that silver, and if he doesn’t get through his prospecting in the next month or so he’ll not find much of anything under six feet of snow, and I’ll have fixed things up as I want them before it’s melted.  Now you’re holding pretty heavy in the Aconada mine, and I’ve been wanting to get my foot in there for a long while.”

Deringham stood up, and thrust aside the bottle Hallam passed him.  “Before we go any further I want you to understand that if Alton is held up there until December is over it is all I ask,” he said.

Hallam nodded.  “Oh, yes,” he said.  “All I want is so many of those shares transferred to me.”

They debated for a while, and then Deringham said, “I would sooner fix it through a third party.”

Hallam laughed unpleasantly.  “That would suit, but I’d want your cheque to buy them with made out payable to me.”

“It would,” said Deringham, “not suit me.”

“Then we can’t make a deal.  It’s me that’s putting this thing through, and if anything goes wrong I’m anxious to have somebody to stand in with me as well as pick up the dollars if it doesn’t.  I’m talking quite straight.  There it is.  Take it or leave it.”

Deringham was silent again.  Then he laughed a little.  “Since I cannot apparently do anything else, I’ll take it.”

Hallam filled up both glasses.  “Then that’s all,” he said.  “Here’s my respects to the Somasco Consolidated.”

Deringham just touched his glass and went out, while Hallam, who sat down and emptied his, smiled ironically.  “That man might have kept his dollars, and I’d be quite pleased if Alton stayed up there a good deal more than two months,” said he.

Deringham was in the meanwhile hastily writing out telegraphic messages which were to cause a little astonishment on the London stock market, and hamper the working of one or two companies.  He would, so far as he could see, be a much poorer man in a few months or so, but he fancied he could gain time to save the reputation that would help him to commence again, and to men of his attainments there are always opportunities.  Then he sent off a mounted messenger, and rode slowly back towards Somasco, while Horton spent some time examining a blotting-pad in his back store.

“I’m kind of sorry I can’t make anything of that stuff,” said he.  “What’s the use of wiring any one the names of cities?”

During the next day Alton drew Deringham into his room, and laid a document on the table.  “I don’t know if that’s quite the usual thing, but Horton and I have been worrying over a lawyer’s book, and I think it will hold,” he said.

Deringham took up the paper, and again there was the little movement at the corners of his eye as he read.