110
wish I could."
"Lomas, old dear!" Reggie turned and looked him over. "Yes, you have been going it. You ought to get away."
"I dare say I shall. That is one of the things I'm going to ask you - what you think about resignation."
"Oh, Peter! As bad as that?" Reggie whistled. "Sorry I was futile. But I couldn't know. There's been nothing in the papers."
"Only innuendoes. Damme, you can't get away from it in the clubs."
They had it out over dinner.
Some months before a new Government had been formed, which was advertised to bring heaven down to earth without delay. And the first outward sign of its inward and spiritual grace was the Great Coal Ramp. Some folks in the City began to buy the shares of certain coal companies. Some folks in the City began to spread rumours that the Government was going to nationalize mines district by district - those districts first in which the shares had been bought. The shares then went to a vast price.
"All the usual nauseating features of a Stock Exchange boom," said Reggie.
"No. This is founded on fact," said Lomas. "That's the distinguishing feature. It was worked on the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Whoever started the game had exact and precise information. They only touched those companies which the Government meant to take over; they knew everything and they knew it right. Somebody of the inner circle gave the plan away."
"'Politics is a cursed profession,'" said Reggie.
Lomas looked gloomily at his Burgundy. "Politicians are almost the lowest of God's creatures," he agreed. "I know that. I'm a Civil servant. But I don't see how any of them can have had a finger in this pie. The scheme hadn't come before the Cabinet. Everybody knew, of course, that something was going to be done. But the whole point is the particular companies concerned in this primary provisional scheme. And nobody knew which they were but the President of the Board of Trade and his private secretary."