Within a few minutes the young man entered,
smiling, debonair,arrogant. He did not know what washappening to him.
Had Dr Fry been here for thelast forty
years?
He was an accomplishedviolinist and a connoisseur
in the pictorial arts.
He could not leave the mill to run itself. That,
Stevens went on, is the cost of current supplied at themill.
Buthis relation to that mill was changed: he could
not do it.
That added eighthundred thousand to the capital;
for Mr Clark took payment inshares. Mill stock, of course, would have givenSam the
opportunity to enquire into origins.
But, half wilfully, half instinctivelyhe explained
its absence to himself.
I dont find that thirty thousand in the statement
of the mill.
To Samsannoyance, Dr Cruikshank had called him in
as a consultant inMauds confinement.
Never, for instance, had he driven up tothe mill in
his luxurious landau. In sheer self-defence he had fostered that feeling. He was an
ordinary, honest, well-intentioned man, ready tobe the first to doubt his own
powers. How he must have hated the idea that he, Rudyard Clark, depended onthe
discretion of Bill Swann. Beatty had estimated his inheritance at twentymillion
dollars .
Yet, what a colour this very proceeding took on in
the light of theone transgression!
Butit was fully seven when he finished with those
plans. What constitutes the enormous cost of the power used? The original
capitalization was of a hundred thousand, of whichtwenty stood in the names of
Messrs.
Yet he was more sparing of their feelingsthan his
father had been.
His father, obsessed by his dream, had not been
responsible for hisactions. What was it that had led him into such speculations? He
would have to facethe world and his tasks with a new sense of disillusionment. Its
where the profits of Light and Power come from.