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Updated: June 1, 2025
They ran along together for a year or more, selling a played-out mine now and then or a "promising claim," for a small sum. Thorn knew that the mines which they handled were no Golcondas, but, as he told himself, you could never absolutely swear that a fellow wouldn't strike it rich in one of them. There came a time, though, when they were way down on their luck.
There was room for snowy mountains, an inland sea, ancient river, and palmy plain, for races of new kinds of men inhabiting a new and odorous land, for fields of gold and golcondas of gems, for a new flora and a new fauna, and, above all the rest combined, there was room for me!
"After all," I said, "though Golcondas have suffered a temporary loss, it's a comfort to think that you should have stood so firm, and not only stemmed the tide, but also prevented yourself from losing anything at all of your own through panic. I'm sorry, of course, for the widows and orphans; but if Colonel Clay has rigged the market, at least it isn't YOU who lose by it this time."
Colonel Clay was a rogue, no doubt a most unblushing rogue; but even a rogue, I believe, has his better moments. And the phrase about the "position of trust and responsibility" touched Charles to the quick, I suppose, in re the Slump in Cloetedorp Golcondas. Though, to be sure, it was a hit at me as well, over the ten per cent commission.
And in effect, when Charles and I took our wonted places in the Pullman next morning, on our way up to the half-yearly meeting of Cloetedorp Golcondas, there was our Doctor, leaning back in his arm-chair as if the car belonged to him. Charles gave me an expressive look. "Does it in style," he whispered, "doesn't he?
To guard against this misfortune which I am bound to admit nobody else fears for him he invested, several years ago, a sum of two hundred thousand pounds in Consols, to serve as a nest-egg in case of the collapse of Golcondas and South Africa generally.
Much later, when the Vandrift estate and farm near Kimberley developed by degrees into the Cloetedorp Golcondas, Limited, my brother-in-law offered me the not unremunerative post of secretary; in which capacity I have ever since been his constant and attached companion. He is not a man whom any common sharper can take in, is Charles Vandrift.
Before he retired to rest, however, in the privacy of the billiard-room, I ventured to ask him: "Charles, will you unload Golcondas to-morrow?" Which, I need hardly explain, is the slang of the Stock Exchange for getting rid of undesirable securities.
Deep down into its innermost heart penetrated the slanting rays of Hesperus like a shaft of light, sunk far into mysterious Golcondas, where myriad gnomes seemed toiling. Soon a light breeze rippled the water, and the shaft was seen no more.
I could see Charles wriggle inside his clothes. He was most uncomfortable. That a man like Cordery should say such things, in so loud a voice, on no matter how little foundation, openly in Piccadilly, was enough in itself to make a sensitive barometer such as Cloetedorp Golcondas go down a point or two. "Hush, hush!"
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