An afternoon of brooding over lost opportunities
led to a night of remorse, and scarcely had day dawned when he ran to
his sitting-room to see if he still had safe the card of Santiago. And
there was the neat and perfumed _carte de visite_ with Santiago's
Parisian address in the corner.
That morning he sought him out, and found Santiago seated at a table
with chemicals and magnifying glasses beside him examining, as it lay
spread wide before him, the old brown coat. And Peters fancied he
wore a puzzled air.
They came at once to business. Peters was rich and asked Santiago to
name his price, and that small dark man admitted financial straits,
and so was willing to sell for thirty thousand pounds. A little
bargaining followed, the price came down and the old brown coat
changed hands once more, for twenty thousand pounds.
Let any who may be inclined to doubt my story understand that in the
City, as any respectable company promoter will tell them, twenty
thousand pounds is invested almost daily with less return for it than
an old tail coat. And, whatever doubts Mr. Peters felt that day about
the wisdom of his investment, there before him lay that tangible
return, that something that may be actually fingered and seen, which
is so often denied to the investor in gold mines and other Selected
Investments. Yet as the days wore on and the old coat grew no
younger, nor any more wonderful, nor the least useful, but more and
more like an ordinary old coat, Peters began once more to doubt his
astuteness.
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