Then they had visited a M. Villeneuve to settle the matter of the loan. Roland had demurred, but M. Rocheville had insisted. And this part of the evening, owing to the sudden change of air, he could recall more clearly. Monsieur Villeneuve was in bed when they arrived and did not extend to him a very cordial welcome. But the loan was at last successfully negotiated, and Roland then discovered that in five hours’ time he would have to catch a train and that it would be agreeable to spend those five hours in sleep. But M. Rocheville was very loath to part with him. For a long while he stood in the porch and, as far as Roland could discern any clear intention behind his confused utterances, appeared to be suggesting that Roland should still further trespass on the hospitality of M. Villeneuve.
“Then, perhaps, if you cannot do that,” M. Rocheville persisted, “you will come and spend a week-end with me before you return. You have my card. I have a nice house in Brussels, very quiet and comfortable. I am not married.”
But Roland had reminded him that he was very busy, and that he did not know if he would have time, but that he would certainly try to arrange a lunch at their next visit.
“And in the meantime I will see that you get that varnish.”
“Ah! that varnish,” said M. Rocheville. And observing that he was now standing alone in the porch, with no one to whom he might address his profound reflections upon the mortality of man, he walked slowly towards the gate, a little puzzled by Roland’s conduct and by his own.
“A delightful young man,” he said, then paused as though he must qualify this estimate, but his Latin cynicism saved him. “Well, well,” he said, “an agreeable interlude.”
That was Roland’s first triumph, and the other, if less adroitly stage-managed, was more audacious, and owed its success to skill quite as much as to good fortune.
Haupsehr & Frohmann directed one of the largest polish factories in the south of Germany; they supplied, indeed, practically the whole of the Rhineland with their goods, and Roland had considered that a meeting between them might prove profitable. He found, however, that it was impossible to obtain an interview with either Herr Haupsehr or Herr Frohmann. “They will not look at English goods.” That was what everyone told him, and a carefully worded request for an interview that he addressed to the head of the firm was answered by return of post with a bald statement that Herren Haupsehr and Frohmann did not consider a personal interview would further the interests of either Mr. Roland Whately, representative of Marston & Marston, or of themselves. And Roland was thus driven to the reluctant conclusion that his advisers were correct. If he were to effect an introduction it would have to be done by guile.