Five minutes later the girl came into the office with a slip of paper.
"The Plover Motor Car Company is registered at 604, Gracechurch
Street," she said. "It has a capital of eighty thousand pounds, of
which forty thousand pounds is paid up. It has works at Kenwood, in
the north-west of London, and the managing director is Mr. Charles O.
Soames."
Bones could only look at her open-mouthed.
"Where on earth did you discover all this surprising information, dear
miss?" he asked, and the girl laughed quietly.
"I can even tell you their telephone number," she said, "because it
happens to be in the Telephone Book. The rest I found in the Stock
Exchange Year Book."
Bones shook his head in silent admiration.
"If there's a typewriter in London----" he began, but she had fled.
An hour later Bones had evolved his magnificent idea. It was an idea
worthy of his big, generous heart and his amazing optimism.
Mr. Charles O. Soames, who sat at a littered table in his
shirt-sleeves, was a man with a big shock of hair and large and heavily
drooping moustache, and a black chin. He smoked a big, heavy pipe,
and, at the moment Bones was announced, his busy pencil was calling
into life a new company offering the most amazing prospects to the
young and wealthy.
He took the card from the hands of his very plain typist, and
suppressed the howl of joy which rose to his throat. For the name of
Bones was known in the City of London, and it was the dream of such men
as Charles O. Soames that one day they would walk from the office of
Mr. Augustus Tibbetts with large parcels of his paper currency under
each arm.
He jumped up from his chair and slipped on a coat, pushed the
prospectus he was writing under a heap of documents--one at least of
which bore a striking family likeness to a county court writ--and
welcomed his visitor decorously and even profoundly.
"In re Plover Car," said Bones briskly. He prided himself upon
coming to the point with the least possible delay.
The face of Mr. Soames fell.
"Oh, you want to buy a car?" he said. He might have truly said "the
car," but under the circumstances he thought that this would be
tactless.
"No, dear old company promoter," said Bones, "I do not want to buy your
car. In fact, you have no cars to sell."
"We've had a lot of labour trouble," said Mr. Soames hurriedly.
"You've no idea of the difficulties in production--what with the
Government holding up supplies--but in a few months----"
"I know all about that," said Bones. "Now, I'm a man of affairs and a
man of business."
He said this so definitely that it sounded like a threat.