VERY nervous condition characterised the speculative and investing public the moment.
A few months before it had been tickled by the papers into coming in for a boom; and it had been caught in a slump. Then it wiped its forehead and said that nothing was safe except the old-fashioned respectable concerns that gave you five per cent. in a good year. Next week Leslie's broke and altered the suicide statistics. All this was noted by Mr. Alfred Peach, millionaire and company promoter. In the present state of the markets he felt especially glad that he had never been caught out yet. He was spoken of with respect. His companies were all of them flourishing; they were all dividend-payers, and some of them paid a very fair dividend indeed. As long as they did that, no inconvenient questions were likely to be asked as to how Mr. Peach had made his money. As a matter of fact, his system had always been to give the public as much as he thought good for them, and scoop the rest. Some people diddle the public; Mr. Peach thought this a mistake, except within reasonable limits—you may want them again. There were one or two inventors who walked about the City, raging against Mr. Peach; but in the City they allow a special extra broad margin for inventors. They go on their knees to be financed; terms are fixed and the financier adheres to them; and then the inventors think they have a right to go about grumbling. The inventors did Mr. Alfred Peach no harm, and the public confidence in him did him a lot of good. In spite of the nervous tension, Mr. Peach had no doubt that the public would come into his "Greasewell's House Paints, Limited," as soon as it had a chance, seeing that Mr. Peach was the chairman, and remembering that Mr. Peach had done them good aforetime. That, indeed, was the general opinion, and the stags prepared to be busy.
Alfred Peach was a dried-up man of fifty-five, taking little or no pleasure in the things that money can bring, and immense pleasure in making more money. He was fond of chess, but chess is cheap. He was no sportsman, and had never owned a yacht or a racehorse. He was very abstemious, more from temperance than conviction; he smoked one cigarette per diem after dinner and drank a very little claret-and-water. Personally, he cared nothing for splendour and luxury, and he did not want a title; but he meant to be a baronet one of these days; his wife wished it. He mostly did what his wife wished.
One morning, shortly before the public appearance of "Greasewell's House Paints, Limited," Mr. Peach was in his office in conversation with Mr. St. John Bulstrode, of Somnerley Park, Weybridge. The two men were strangers to each other, but Bulstrode had written to Peach with reference to an electrical invention, and this interview was the result. Bulstrode was a clean-shaven man of thirty-five, tall, good-looking, and well turned out. Peach looked almost insignificant beside him.
"Well, now, Mr. Bulstrode," said Peach, "what have you got and what do you want? First, what have you got? I don't know anything about electricity; so put it simply. Excuse me if I seem abrupt, but my time's precious."
"Certainly. My invention gets electricity direct from heat. At present you get only fifteen or twenty per cent. out of your coal."
"Where's the rest go?"
"Up the chimney and in the latent heat of steam. My invention gets seventy-five or eighty per cent. out of the coal."
"I see. That cuts down the coal bill. What other bills does it run up instead?"
"None. My generating plant is cheaper in the original cost, as well as in the working, than any other."
"Pardon me if I don't seem enthusiastic. You see, if this were all right, it would be such a very, very big thing. Now, I get a lot of things brought me; and it's my experience that most of the very big things are all wrong. To come to the second point, what do you want?"
"As I said in my letter, I want you to take this thing over and sell it to the public. I'm not a man of business; I was never brought up to it. I'm an electrician that has worked on one thing for ten years and has got it. Of course, I have private means, or I could not have done it; electrical experiments on a large scale are costly. Now I have got it, I want to sell it well. There you can help me; you understand company business and you have a great name with the public."
"And, putting it plainly, where should I come in?"
"If you took the thing up, you would come in as partner on even terms."
"It's worth looking into. Where's it running?"
"At my place—Somnerley Park, Weybridge."
"When could I send a man down?"