Thorpe's thoughts, however, were not upon types. “Well”--he said, from the opposite chair, in his roundest, heartiest voice, when the other had with diffidence suffered himself to be served, and had deferentially lighted on one side the big cigar pressed upon him--“Well--and how's the world been using you?”
“Not very handsomely, Mr. Thorpe,” the other responded, in a hushed, constrained tone.
“Oh, chuck the Misters!” Thorpe bade him. “Aren't we old pals, man? You're plain Tavender, and I'm plain Thorpe.”
“You're very kind,” murmured Tavender, still abashed. For some minutes he continued to reply dolefully, and with a kind of shamefaced reluctance, to the questions piled upon him. He was in evil luck: nothing had gone well with him; it had been with the greatest difficulty that he had scraped together enough to get back to London on the chance of obtaining some expert commission; practically he possessed nothing in the world beyond the clothes on his back, and the contents of two old carpet-bags--these admissions, by degrees, were wormed from him.
“But have you parted with the concession, then, that you bought from me?” Thorpe suddenly asked him. “Help yourself to some more whiskey!”
Tavender sighed as he tipped the decanter. “It isn't any good,” he answered, sadly. “The Government repudiates it--that is, the Central Government at Mexico. Of course, I never blamed you. I bought it with my eyes open, and you sold it in perfect good faith. I never doubted that at all. But it's not worth the paper it's written on--that's certain. It's that that busted me--that, and some other things.”
“Well--well!” said Thorpe, blankly. His astonishment was obviously genuine, and for a little it kept him silent, while he pondered the novel aspects of the situation thus disclosed. Then his eyes brightened, as a new path outlined itself.
“I suppose you've got the papers?--the concession and my transfer to you and all that?” he asked, casually.
“Oh, yes,” replied Tavender. He added, with a gleam of returning self-command--“That's all I have got.”
“Let's see--what was it you paid me?--Three thousand eight hundred pounds, wasn't it?”
Tavender made a calculation in mental arithmetic. “Yes, something like that. Just under nineteen thousand dollars,” he said.