"Vat did you say his name vas?" Von Baumser asked suddenly.
"Girdlestone."
"Is his father a Kauffmann?"
"What the divil is a Kauffmann?" the major asked impatiently. "Is it a merchant you mean?"
"Ah, a merchant. One who trades with the Afrikaner?"
"The same."
Von Baumser took a bulky pocket-book from his inside pocket, and scanned a long list of names therein. "Ah, it is the same," he cried at last triumphantly, shutting up the book and replacing it. "Girdlestone & Co., African kauf--dat is, merchants--Fenchurch Street, City."
"Those are they."
"And you say dey are rich?"
"Yes."
"Very rich?"
"Yes."
The major began to think that his companion had been imbibing in his absence, for there was an unfathomable smile upon his face, and his red beard and towsy hair seemed to bristle from some internal excitement.
"Very rich! Ho, ho! Very rich!" he laughed. "I know dem; not as friends, Gott bewahre! but I know dem and their affairs."
"What are you driving at? Let's have it. Out with it, man."
"I tell you," said the German, suddenly becoming supernaturally solemn and sawing his hand up and down in the air to emphasize his remarks, "in tree or four months, or a year at the most, there vill be no firm of Girdlestone. They are rotten, useless--whoo! He blew an imaginary feather up into the air to demonstrate the extreme fragility of the house in question.
"You're raving, Baumser," said Major Clutterbuck excitedly. "Why, man, their names are above suspicion. They are looked upon as the soundest concern in the City."
"Dat may be; dat may be," the German answered stolidly. "Vat I know, I know, and vat I say I say."
"And how d'ye know it? D'ye tell me that you know lore about it than the men on 'Change and the firms that do business with them?"
"I know vat I know, and I say vat I say," the other repeated. "Dat tobacco-man Burger is a rogue. Dere is five-and-thirty in the hundred of water in this canaster tobacco, and one must be for ever relighting."
"And you won't tell me where you heard this of the Girdlestones?"
"It vould be no good to you. It Is enough dat vat I say is certain. Let it suffice that dere are people vat are bound to tell other people all dat dey know about anything whatever."
"You don't make it over clear now," the old soldier grumbled. "You mane that these secret societies and Socialists let each other know all that comes in their way and have their own means of getting information."
"Dat may be, and dat may not be," the German answered, in the same oracular voice. "I thought, in any case, my good friend Clutterbuck, dat I vould give you vat you call in English the straight tap. It is always vell to have the straight tap."