"Really!" murmured Edward Henry.
"I've got an option to take up the remainder of the lease, with sixty-four years to run, on the condition I put up a theatre. And the option expires in exactly a fortnight's time."
Edward Henry frowned, and then asked:
"What are the figures?"
"That is to say," Mr. Bryany corrected himself, smiling courteously, "I've got half the option."
"And who's got the other half?"
"Rose Euclid's got the other half."
At the mention of the name of one of the most renowned star actresses in England, Edward Henry excusably started.
"Not the--?" he exclaimed.
Mr. Bryany nodded proudly, blowing out much smoke.
"Tell me," asked Edward Henry, confidentially, leaning forward, "where do those ladies get their names from?"
"It happens in this case to be her real name," said Mr. Bryany. "Her father kept a tobacconists' shop in Cheapside. The sign was kept up for many years, until Rose paid to have it changed."
"Well, well!" breathed Edward Henry, secretly thrilled by these extraordinary revelations. "And so you and she have got it between you?"
Mr. Bryany said:
"I bought half of it from her some time ago. She was badly hard up for a hundred pounds, and I let her have the money." He threw away his cigarette half-smoked, with a free gesture that seemed to imply that he was capable of parting with a hundred pounds just as easily.
"How did she get the option?" Edward Henry inquired, putting into the query all the innuendo of a man accustomed to look at great worldly affairs from the inside.
"How did she get it? She got it from the late Lord Woldo. She was always very friendly with the late Lord Woldo, you know." Edward Henry nodded. "Why, she and the Countess of Chell are as thick as thieves! You know something about the countess down here, I reckon?"
The Countess of Chell was the wife of the supreme local magnate.
Edward Henry answered calmly, "We do."
He was tempted to relate a unique adventure of his youth, when he had driven the countess to a public meeting in his mule-carriage; but sheer pride kept him silent.
"I asked you for the figures," he added in a manner which requested Mr. Bryany to remember that he was the founder, chairman, and proprietor of the Five Towns Universal Thrift Club, one of the most successful business organisations in the Midlands.
"Here they are," said Mr. Bryany, passing across the table a sheet of paper.
And as Edward Henry studied them he could hear Mr. Bryany faintly cooing into his ear: "Of course Rose got the ground-rent reduced. And when I tell you that the demand for theatres in the West End far exceeds the supply, and that theatre rents are always going up; when I tell you that a theatre costing £25,000 to build can be let for £11,000 a year, and often £300 a week on a short term--" And he could hear the gas singing over his head; and also, unhappily, he could hear Dr. Stirling talking to his wife and saying to her that the bite was far more serious than it looked, and Nellie hoping very audibly that nothing had "happened" to him, her still absent husband. And then he could hear Mr. Bryany again:
"When I tell you--"
"When you tell me all this, Mr. Bryany," he interrupted with the ferocity which in the Five Towns is regarded as mere directness, "I wonder why the devil you want to sell your half of the option if you do want to sell it. Do you want to sell it?"
"To tell you the truth," said Mr. Bryany as if up to that moment he had told naught but lies, "I do."
"Why?"
"Oh, I'm always travelling about, you see. England one day, America the next." Apparently he had quickly abandoned the strictness of veracity. "All depends on the governor's movements. I couldn't keep a proper eye on an affair of that kind."
Edward Henry laughed:
"And could I?"
"Chance for you to go a bit oftener to London," said Mr. Bryany, laughing too. Then, with extreme and convincing seriousness, "You're the very man for a thing of that kind. And you know it."
Edward Henry was not displeased by this flattery.
"How much?"
"How much? Well, I told you frankly what I paid. I made no concealment of that, did I now? Well, I want what I paid. It's worth it!"
"Got a copy of the option, I hope!"
Mr. Bryany produced a copy of the option.
"I am nothing but an infernal ass to mix myself up in a mad scheme like this," said Edward Henry to his soul, perusing the documents. "It's right off my line, right bang off it. But what a lark!" But even to his soul he did not utter the remainder of the truth about himself, namely, "I should like to cut a dash before this insufferable patroniser of England and the Five Towns."
Suddenly something snapped within him, and he said to Mr. Bryany:
"I'm on!"
Those words and no more!
"You are?" Mr. Bryany exclaimed, mistrusting his ears.
Edward Henry nodded.
"Well, that's business anyway," said Mr. Bryany, taking a fresh cigarette and lighting it.
"It's how we do business down here," said Edward Henry, quite inaccurately; for it was not in the least how they did business down there.
Mr. Bryany asked, with a rather obvious anxiety:
"But when can you pay?
"Oh, I'll send you a cheque in a day or two." And Edward Henry in his turn took a fresh cigarette.
"That won't do! That won't do!" cried Mr. Bryany. "I absolutely must have the money to-morrow morning in London. I can sell the option in London for eighty pounds, I know that."
"You must have it?"
"Must!"
They exchanged glances. And Edward Henry, rapidly acquiring new knowledge of human nature on the threshold of a world strange to him, understood that Mr. Bryany, with his private sitting-room and his investments in Seattle and Calgary, was at his wits' end for a bag of English sovereigns, and had trusted to some chance encounter to save him from a calamity. And his contempt for Mr. Bryany was that of a man to whom his bankers are positively servile.
"Here," Mr. Bryany almost shouted, "don't light your cigarette with my option!"
"I beg pardon," Edward Henry apologised, dropping the document which he had creased into a spill. There were no matches left on the table.
"I'll find you a match."
"It's of no consequence," said Edward Henry, feeling in his pockets. Having discovered therein a piece of paper, he twisted it and rose to put it to the gas.
"Could you slip round to your bank and meet me at the station in the morning with the cash?" suggested Mr. Bryany.
"No, I couldn't," said Edward Henry.
"Well, then, what--?"
"Here, you'd better take this," the Card, reborn, soothed his host, and, blowing out the spill which he had just ignited at the gas, he offered it to Mr. Bryany.
"What?"
"This, man!"
Mr. Bryany, observing the peculiarity of the spill, seized it and unrolled it, not without a certain agitation.
He stammered:
"Do you mean to say it's genuine?"
"You'd