Edgar Wallace

“ It was five years since Theodore Gelden had borrowed twenty-five pounds, at a moment when twenty-five pounds was a lot of money. Theodore was buying Siberian oil-fields with Carfew's good gold, and incidentally with his mother's pitiably small capital. I forget whether he was on the verge of clearing two millions profit or four. It was something fabulous, and all that was required to complete the impending negotiations were those twenty-five pounds. And Carfew lent them. ”

“ Not a pleasant man, by any means, because he had habits which are not pleasant to nice men. He associated with people who did not move in the best of circles, and he drank more than was good for an ambitions junior reporter. For ambitious he was, this lantern-jawed lank youth, with his crudities of speech and his scarcely hidden brutality.
Gelden lived with his invalid sister and his widowed mother in the days when he and Carfew had been reporters on The Dallington Times and Herald, and Carfew had boarded with them. ”

“ To a question Carfew put he replied readily.
"If one may judge by his style of living," he said, "there's no doubt about his having made a fortune, though I doubt very much if it is a million. Gelden has been bulling tin. He does a little business through Transom e and Cole, but the bulk of his buying has been through some other firm."
"Am I to follow him in his oil speculations?" ”