Part 37 (2/2)

”I'll do the best I can,” Norgate promised, ”but this is rather a change for me, isn't it? Will Boko come along?”

Selingman smiled for a moment, but immediately afterwards his face was almost stern.

”Young man,” he said, ”from the moment you pledged your brains to my service, every action of your day has been recorded. From one of my pigeonholes I could draw out a paper and tell you where you lunched yesterday, where you dined the day before, whom you met and with whom you talked, and so it will be until our work is finished.”

”So long as I know,” Norgate sighed, rising to his feet, ”I'll try to get used to him.”

Norgate found no particular difficulty in carrying out the commissions entrusted to him. The sale of land is not an everyday affair, and he found the agents exceedingly polite and prompt. The man with whom he arranged the purchase of about three quarters of an acre of building land at Golder's Green, on the conclusion of the transaction exhibited some little curiosity.

”Queer thing,” he remarked, ”but I sold half an acre, a month or two ago, to a man who came very much as you come to-day. Might have been a foreigner. Said he was going to put up a factory to make boots and shoes.

He is not going to start to build until next year, but he wanted a very solid floor to stand heavy machinery. Look here.”

The agent climbed upon a pile of bricks, and Norgate followed his example. There was a boarded s.p.a.ce before them, with scaffolding poles all around, but no other signs of building, and the interior consisted merely of a perfectly smooth concrete floor.

”That's the queerest way of setting about building a factory I ever saw,”

the man pointed out.

Norgate, who was not greatly interested, a.s.sented. The agent escorted him back to his taxicab.

”Of course, it's not my business,” he admitted, ”and you needn't say anything about this to your princ.i.p.als, but I hope they don't stop with laying down concrete floors. Of course, money for the property is the chief thing we want, but we do want factories and the employment of labour, and the sooner the better. This fellow--Reynolds, he said his name was--pays up for the property all right, has that concrete floor prepared, and clears off.”

”Raising the money to build, perhaps,” Norgate remarked. ”I don't think there's any secret about my people's intentions. They are going to build factories for the manufacture of crockery.”

The agent brightened up.

”Well, that's a new industry, anyway. Crockery, eh?”

”It's a big German firm in Cannon Street,” Norgate explained. ”They are going to make the stuff here. That ought to be better for our people.”

The young man nodded.

”I expect they're afraid of tariff reform,” he suggested. ”Those Germans see a long way ahead sometimes.”

”I am beginning to believe that they do,” Norgate a.s.sented, as he stepped into the taxi.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

Norgate walked into the club rather late that afternoon. Selingman and Prince Lenemaur were talking together in the little drawing-room. They called him in, and a few minutes later the Prince took his leave.

”Well, that's all arranged,” Norgate reported. ”I have bought the three sites. There was only one thing the fellow down at Golder's Hill was anxious about.”

”And that?”

”He hoped you weren't just going to put down a concrete floor and then shut the place up.”

Mr. Selingman's amiable imperturbability was for once disturbed.

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