'I second that motion,' said Lord Alfred, without moving his hand from his breast.
'I understood that we were to have a statement,' said Montague.
'You've had a statement,' said Mr Cohenlupe.
'I will put my motion to the vote,' said the Chairman. 'I shall move an amendment,' said Paul, determined that he would not be altogether silenced.
'There is nobody to second it,' said Mr Cohenlupe.
'How do you know till I've made it?' asked the rebel. 'I shall ask Lord Nidderdale to second it, and when he has heard it I think that he will not refuse.'
'Oh, gracious me! why me? No;--don't ask me. I've got to go away. I have indeed.'
'At any rate I claim the right of saying a few words. I do not say whether every affair of this Company should or should not be published to the world.'
'You'd break up everything if you did,' said Cohenlupe.
'Perhaps everything ought to be broken up. But I say nothing about that. What I do say is this. That as we sit here as directors and will be held to be responsible as such by the public, we ought to know what is being done. We ought to know where the shares really are. I for one do not even know what scrip has been issued.'
'You've bought and sold enough to know something about it,' said Melmotte.
Paul Montague became very red in the face. 'I, at any rate, began,' he said, 'by putting what was to me a large sum of money into the affair.'
'That's more than I know,' said Melmotte. 'Whatever shares you have, were issued at San Francisco, and not here.'
'I have taken nothing that I haven't paid for,' said Montague. 'Nor have I yet had allotted to me anything like the number of shares which my capital would represent. But I did not intend to speak of my own concerns.'
'It looks very like it,' said Cohenlupe.
'So far from it that I am prepared to risk the not improbable loss of everything I have in the world. I am determined to know what is being done with the shares, or to make it public to the world at large that I, one of the directors of the Company, do not in truth know anything about it. I cannot, I suppose, absolve myself from further responsibility; but I can at any rate do what is right from this time forward,--and that course I intend to take.'