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"I think I would though, if I were you. At the worst, it will justify you in refusing to do business with us. Do you happen to be walking down toward Pall Mall?" Sloyd's offices were in Mount Street. "Good-day, Sloyd. I'll drop in to-morrow." With an idea that some concession might still be forthcoming, not from any expectation of enjoying his walk, the Major consented to accompany Harry.
Sloyd was half inclined to be content; the firm would make a thousand; the balance would be good interest on the capitalist's ten thousand pounds; and there would still be enough of a victory to soothe the feelings of everybody concerned. "I'm expecting the gentleman who is associated with us. If you'll excuse me, I'll step out and see if he's arrived."
The idea now was far different from what it had sounded when Sloyd gave it utterance in the tiny strip of garden behind the tiny house, and she had greeted it with scorn and a mocking smile.
Presently she smiled again and said, "Yes, find out about Merrion Lodge for me, Mr Sloyd." He began to gather up his pictures and papers. "Is Baron Tristram alive?" she asked suddenly. Sloyd recovered his air of superiority. "Her ladyship is a peeress in her own right," he explained. "She's not married then?" "A widow, madame." "And wasn't her husband Baron Tristram?"
"And I'll tell you plainly what I think. Mr Sloyd's a young business man so are you." "I'm a baby," Harry agreed. "And blackmailing big people isn't a good way to start." He watched Harry, but he did not forget to watch Sloyd too. "Of course I use the word in a figurative sense. The estate's not worth half that money to you; we happen to want it Oh, I'm always open! So " He gave a shrug.
"I don't want to be anything but friendly. Neither Sloyd nor I want that especially toward Mr Iver or toward you, Major. We've been neighbors." He smiled and went on, smiling still: "Oddly enough, I've said what I'm going to say to you once before on a different occasion. You seem to have been trying to frighten us. I am not to be frightened, that's all."
Youth and a sense of elation caused Sloyd to add that they would always be glad to cooperate with other gentlemen interested in Blinkhampton. Iver had many irons in the fire; he could no more devote himself exclusively and personally to Blinkhampton than Napoleon could spend all his time in the Peninsula.
As a personal taste, Mr Sloyd would have liked to be connected, however remotely, with the aristocracy, and, if he had been, would have let his social circle hear a good deal about it; even a business connection was something, and suffered no loss of importance in his practised hands.
An hour passed in the office of Sloyd, Sloyd, and Gurney. Harry Tristram came out whistling. He looked very pleased; his step was alert; he had found something to do, he had made a beginning good or bad. It looked good: that was enough. He was no longer an idler or merely an onlooker. He had begun to take a hand in the game himself.
He awoke with a start to the fact that he was still, in the main, living with and moving among people who smacked strong of Blent, who had known him as Tristram of Blent, whose lives had crossed his because he was Addie Tristram's son. That was true of even his new acquaintance Lady Evenswood truer still of Neeld, of Southend, aye, of Sloyd and the Major most true of his cousin Cecily.
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