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As the Tube jerked him spasmodically to Bank station Peter’s mind ran over the clauses of his new contract; pondered how best to exploit it. This absolute control of the Beckmann brand gave a new interest to the Jameson business; and with that interest, came a little flash of sentiment. He remembered his first year in the City, Tom Simpson’s doubting-Thomas attitude to a College boy, his father’s shrewd help. … But the Mr. Jameson who pushed his way through the swing-doors of 24 Lime Street and down the dark passage to the warehouse, was very far from appearing a sentimentalist.

“Morning, Parkins,” he said to the young clerk who looked up at him from the desk in the outside office—glass-panelled, electric-lit, heated by a glowing gas-stove.

“Good morning, Sir,” answered the boy.

“Mr. Simpson inside?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Peter passed on through the warehouse; cast a rapid eye over the high wooden racks piled with cigar-boxes, at the Triplex glass sky-lights, on George the old warehouseman who was pottering about, duster-in-hand.

“Morning, George. How’s the rheumatism?”

“Thank you, Mister Peter, I can’t complain. And are you all right, Sir?”

“Never better, George,” said our Mr. Jameson; and added (to himself) “He won’t last much longer. I must talk to Simpson about pensioning him off. Two quid a week, I suppose. Extravagance! but the old chap’s earned his last bit of comfort. …”

Tom Simpson sat at his desk—an old-fashioned sloping-top desk of ink-stained mahogany—in the back office; where, despite the aid of reflectors, set slanting in the one high-up window, green-shaded electrics burned for nearly ten months of the year. A bluff man of fifty was Tom, fresh-complexioned and brown-bearded still; calm, of a certain limited shrewdness, but unimaginative; dressed in black morning-coat, City-tailored; gold “Albert” festooned across his ample paunch, key-chain drooping from trouser-pocket.

“Well?” he asked, looking up from the smeared typewritten pages of the Havana mail.

“Got it,” said Peter laconically; hanging hat, coat and stick on the brass-hook behind the glass door—which he carefully closed.

“No!” Interrogatively.

“Yes.”

“Well I’m damned.” Simpson glanced admiringly at his partner. He never quite understood Peter; had always been a little afraid of his “recklessness”; had—for that reason—refused to invest any capital in the Nirvana cigarette-factory.

Peter drew the contract from his breast-pocket; and they scrutinized it together. It was written in English, rather Teutonic English, but absolutely clear.

“Who drew this up?” asked Simpson.

“I did. A German lawyer went over it for me; but it’s enforceable in London.”

“Good.”

They plunged into details.

“What’s this. Five thousand pounds open account? Anything over that to be drawn for at six months? We don’t want all that credit, Peter.”

“Yes, we do. I may have to take some more of my capital out. The factory, you know.”

Simpson put down the contract. “Of course it’s not for me to advise you: but aren’t you getting just a little out of your depth?”

“You charge me with interest on the money which I draw out,” began Peter, temper swiftly frayed. Then relenting, “Oh, it’s quite all right, old man, I know what I’m doing.”

A huge black outline loomed up against the glass door, knocked, said in a guttural voice “May I come in?”

Entered Julius Hagenburg: top-hatted, black-moustached, patent-booted, flower at buttonhole: Hagenburg, naturalized Englishman, undoubtedly the best salesman of fine cigars in Europe—and the worst payer. What Peter’s investment in Nirvana meant to Simpson, Simpson’s credit to Hagenburg meant to Peter. Yet it was a profitable account, amazingly so. Hagenburg rarely bought less than thirty thousand cigars at a clip; would pay anything from three to seven pounds a hundred for them.

How he disposed of the goods, neither of the partners knew; though Peter, who had met the man frequently on his own Continental cigarette-expeditions, had a shrewd idea that most of the cigars—which went, under bond, in plain cases, from London to Amsterdam—eventually found their way, at entirely fictitious prices, to such places as the Sporting Club in Monte Carlo, the Jockey Club in Vienna, and even as far as the gipsy-haunted private rooms in the night-restaurants of St. Petersburg.

However, this time Hagenburg had brought money, nearly a thousand pounds of it, in “ready.”

“You will give me a receipt now, please,” he said to Simpson, who went out of the room, notes rustling in his hands, leaving Peter and his pet aversion together.

“I hear you got back the sole agency of the Beckmann brand,” said the German, sitting down and lighting a black cigar from the box that Peter pushed across to him.

“Where the dickens did you hear that?”

“It’s true then?” Hagenburg smiled.

“Possibly.”

“I can increase my business with Beckmann cigars in—Holland, if you are in a position to help me with a small discount, say five per cent. …”

“Now I wonder how the hell he found out about that contract?” Peter said to himself when the man had gone. But Simpson, to whom he mentioned the matter, made light of it. “There’s been a good deal of gossip about your going to Hamburg,” he said. “Probably it was only guess-work.”

Peter put on his hat; wondered, as he walked rapidly along Fenchurch Street, why Simpson hadn’t possessed enough gumption to keep the destination of such an important journey secret. “Didn’t think it mattered. Never thought I’d get that contract,” he decided, turning down Lombard Court, mounting the carpeted steps to the upstairs luncheon-room of the Lombard Restaurant.

“Downstairs,” in the Lombard, hatted men jostle at communal tables; steaks frizzle, crowded, on the grill; joints appear, dwindle, disappear and are replaced; waiters bustle and the girl at the cash-desk has barely time to smile. But “upstairs,” luncheon is a solemn and a costly function.

At the small bar in the corner of the oak-panelled room, one hand dallying with his vermouth, eye-glassed, faultlessly attired, a miniature dude though well over middle age, stood Peter’s best acquaintance (and Jameson’s most aggressive competitor), Maurice Beresford of “Beresford and Beresford.”

He grinned at Peter, letting the monocle fall from his eye as he did so; said laconically: “The usual Peter.”

“Thanks,” answered Peter; smiling a greeting to the lady behind the bar.

“We lunch together, I presume,” quizzed Beresford.

“You presume correctly, Maurice.”

“Toss you who pays—drinks included.”

“Not much. You asked me to have a drink. But I’ll toss you for lunch.” The sovereign clinked on the bar-top. Peter won.

They finished their drinks; settled themselves at the usual reserved table by the fire; ordered—after some wrangling—completely different lunches: for Beresford (who possessed, despite his size, an enormous appetite) grilled sole, fricassee of veal, and plum duff; for Peter, surfeited with greasy food, cold beef and pickled walnuts.

“And now,” said Beresford, sipping his whisky and Perrier, “be a good boy and tell me all you’ve been up to in Hamburg.”

“Lies, or the truth?”

“The truth. Just for a change.”

Peter cut a morsel of beef with great deliberation; decided that Beresford probably knew.

“I think I’ve done you in the eye this time, Maurice.”

“I thought you had. We got a cable from Beckmanns this morning. Nothing definite in it: but putting two and two together, you know. …”

They looked at each other, and laughed. The Beresfords, both bachelors, were extremely well off; their transactions with the Beckmann factory of no great importance. Still, by his next remark Peter knew that Maurice was hit, in his business-vanity if not in his pocket.

“What I like about you, Peter,” he said, screwing the monocle back into his eye, “is that although you are every bit as unscrupulous as the rest of us, you manage to keep up a pose of old-fashioned respectability, combined with modern straightforwardness, which I, for one, find it impossible to adopt. How many cases did you have to guarantee Beckmanns?”

“Oh quite a lot,” parried Peter.

“And what is going to happen about my pending orders? Will they be shipped, or not?”

This being the crux of the conversation, Peter changed the subject; began talking about shade-grown wrappers, the new schedule of Trust prices and other mysteries unintelligible to the profane.

“It will be very unfair if they aren’t,” interrupted Beresford.

“I’ll have to talk it over with Simpson.”

“Great genius—Simpson,” said Beresford sarcastically.

“And, either way, you’ll have to pay us a profit on them. …”

Maurice Beresford walked back to his office distinctly disgruntled.