He bought them for the
March account, and has been paying contango since then, and holding on in
hopes of a rise. I don't know whether the purchase was a large one, but I
know he's been uncommonly savage about the drop. He bought on the
strength of private information from the other side of the Channel. The
Emperor was putting his own money into the Phoenician business, and it
was the best game out, and so on. But he seems to have been made a fool
of, for once in a way."
"The bonds may steady themselves."
"Yes, they _may_; but, on the other hand, they mayn't. There are the
Stock Exchange lists, with Phoenicians ticked off by your brother's own
pen. A steady drop, you see. 'Let me have a telegram if there's a sudden
rise,' said Sheldon to me the day he left London; 'they'll go up with
rush when they do move.' But they've been moving the other way ever
since; and I think if he stayed away till doomsday it would be pretty
much the same."
"_Phoenicians are rising rapidly. Come back to town._"
These were the words of the telegraphic despatch which shaped itself in
George Sheldon's brain, as his brother's clerk revealed the secrets of
his employer.
It was found--the solution of the one great question as to how Philip
Sheldon was to be lured away from the bedside of his unconscious victim.
Here was the bait.
"I knew I could do it; I knew I could get all I wanted to know out of
this shallow-brained idiot," he said to himself, triumphantly.
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