Petard

“ When a little later one of his innumerable hostesses had taken Charlie Terrard aside, and had implored him to tell her what Petre was doing (“You are the only man who knows,” she had said, archly, damn her!) Terrard with a look of too much wisdom had protested that he didn’t know. When the private deal in Magnas was over and the general appreciation of the stock and the benefit it had produced to the house he served was discussed in the Bank parlor, the Master of that place smiled meaningly at his subordinate and said that Petre was a curious man. ”

“ The young broker, Charlie Terrard, deliberately said, looking at Mr. Petre with a slightly quizzical look:
“Well, sir, what do you think of them?” To which he bluntly added, “You know more about it than most of us.”
One or two of the less controlled faces took on an awkward look, the others went suddenly blank. The two ex-Lord Chancellors exchanged glances covertly and both half smiled:—certainly Terrard had done a monstrous thing! But then, great men like John K. are often straightforward, and sometimes eccentricity of that sort pleases them. They all waited for the answer, not breathing. ”

“ Terrard shook his head. “It can’t be that. He’s offering them to Trefusis,” he said.
Mr. Charlbury smiled pitifully. “That’s the bait,” he remarked. “He’ll buy in later, after the slump.”
Terrard respected his partner’s judgment in High Finance now, as he had for so long in lesser things of the sort. But he had seen Petre’s face with his own eyes that evening; Petre’s bewildering appeal was still in his ears. He was confident there was something much deeper than so obvious a maneuver. Perhaps a man like Petre, one of the masters of the world, had heard of coming war; of plague. ”

“ Petre a moment’s relief in his suffering to notice with what deference his old friend the clerk noted so strange a plan, without deposit, without explanation. He was more convinced than ever that this unknown Self was of vast consequence. Then, after all this trouble, a new thought struck him. Would it not be better to wait an hour or two? Could he not discover Terrard’s address and see whether it had really gone through? Such a man must be in the reference books. The miserable man hesitated, irresolute, when a shock hurled him into a decision. ”

“ Mr. Petre delved down again into the depths of his mind. Whatever he may have been in that past life of his, he had evidently been courteous, for he felt the necessity of answering by writing and by messenger, and not by telephone. The more he thought of the affair, the more he discovered at once its possibilities and its dangers. In the last few hours the shrinking from humiliation had become an obsession. He was now fixed in a mood such that he would rather have died than admit his hidden trouble. ”

“ Something in the man which made him great, but which, to Terrard as to every one else, also made him inexplicable. He had to propose to-day a deal upon a scale quite out of the common—far above the humdrum of the Paddenham Site—and he dreaded a scene. Besides which, Mr. Petre seemed to him to have got odder and odder in all these last few months, imprisoning himself absurdly. It made the young man nervous to think of it. ”

“ Their words were the more vapid and without stuff, the more like sawdust, because each man and woman had in his heart one object only dominating all, and that object was John K. Petre, high above the few lords of the free modern world: fifty million pounds incarnate, and come to dwell amongst us. There, before them, in the flesh.
As the fowls of a farmyard will change their whole beings, clucking and chattering prodigiously and scrambling together in a swarm, and the whole flock alive with appetite when a handful of grain is thrown down ”

“ Petre’s soul. But the scent of that fetid air nauseated him. He read the prices as a decent man reads, from a kind of itch and against his better instincts, the exploitation of the gallows by our great modern Lords in their newspapers. He reads: but hates it the more as he reads. Till at last he burns the rag.
So felt Mr. Petre as he watched Magnas moving.
When a big thing moves it does not move like Touaregs, that flighty Gallic-African stock; it moves as moves the mighty Pachyderm, in a solemn ascentional surge like a herd of elephants breasting a hill ”

“ The stormy petrel is known to be the smallest bird with webbed feet, consequently his smallness is to the ornithologist his chief distinction. He is no bigger than a sparrow, and when seen flying in the wake of a ship, gliding to and fro close to the surface, his small size, sharp-pointed, swallow-like wings, dark plumage, and snow-white rump, give him the appearance of the house-martin. Like other pelagic birds, the petrel when on the wing is perpetually seeking its food, and is seen to drop often on to the surface to pick up some floating particle from the water ”

“ The water was alive, and London had half forgotten its native misery.
It was an air in which new thoughts and clear ones should naturally come to a man; but none came to Mr. Petre. He was pondering upon that interview which he had to face, and went round it in his thoughts, coming no nearer to a center, but still remaining as he had been since the blow fell upon him, attendant upon Fate. It was to be about some horrid business called the Paddenham Site. ”

“ He divined the reality behind the mask. Petre was the soul, Terrard the mere mouthpiece. Petre was the Captain of that day.... How marvelously did that great man affect tedium! How admirably assumed was the recurrent spasm of disgust when his eyes met Henry Trefusis’ eyes!
It took less than two hours. And at the end of it there existed in duplicate a document not fifty lines long which left Charlie Terrard assured that Mr. Petre would stand as an equal God and twin master of B.A.R.
The victors went out. ”

“ Petre, getting up and pacing slowly down the little hotel sitting-room and back again. “I see.” For, like the blind man in the story, he didn’t see at all.
“That’s the trouble,” said his guest, leaning back in his chair as though he were relieved by the conclusion of the tale. “It must be one man, and one big man, for they’re all shy of it, are the little ones. And it must be one man because it will have to be handled briskly at both ends.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre rapidly, “at both ends.”
“Buying and selling,” said Terrard.
“Obviously,” said Mr. Petre. ”

“ He would meet no one. He refused to go out into the great world of Dukes and Gwryths and their sisters. He hid.
While these negotiations were toward he had, as may be believed, fled from the Splendide; for once more, less than a week after his return, he had seen Mephistopheles—only the back of him—striding towards the bar. He had taken refuge in the omniscience of Charles Terrard, and Charlie Terrard had found him rooms in the Temple under the convenient name of Patten. Henry Patten was painted on the door and Mr. Petre was at great pains to remember it. ”

“ Petre’s entrance, but very courteously motioned him to a chair, on which that financier sat down uncertainly, awaiting inquisition. The Great Specialist looked at him for a moment, and he at the Great Specialist. He felt sure that the Great Specialist was searching the very inwards of his soul, while as for himself, he could not even search, but only very generally receive the most external, the most superficial impression of that eminent man before him. ”

“ There are several other species of petrels, but I will only mention one other kind, the Pelacanoides Berardi, which offers an example of those extraordinary cases, of a bird evidently belonging to one well-marked family, yet both in its habits and structure allied to a very distinct tribe. This bird never leaves the quiet inland sounds. When disturbed it dives to a distance, and on coming to the surface, with the same movement takes flight. ”

“ Yes; he must, he must, he must discover; but he must discover before any fatal guess, any frightened random answer of his to some chance question, should destroy him.
One thing consoled him; the valiant loyalty of that Registration Clerk at the Splendide, whom now he felt to be his own brother in a world of misery and fear. For as Mr. Petre had leaped into that cab he had shot a glance at the dreadful Mephistopheles, and had seen him asking a question at the desk, and had seen the noble official, who had all power in his hands, shake his read resolutely and turn away. ”

“ There are many known breeding-places of this Petrel from the Scilly Islands northwards, along the west coast of England, Wales, and Scotland to the Shetlands, and many others round the coasts of Ireland. The favourite breeding haunts of the Stormy Petrel are rocky islands, rising in uneven turf-clad downs, strewn with masses of rock and stones. The bird probably pairs for life, and is more or less gregarious at its breeding-places. The slight nest of dry grass is placed in an old rabbit earth or Puffin burrow, under a rock or heap of loose stones, or in ruins, and amongst masonry. ”

“ The names of stormy petrel and Mother Carey’s chicken are as familiar to everyone as that of rook, or partridge, or hedge-sparrow; but the little bird they belong to is known by sight to comparatively few persons. It is pre-eminently an oceanic species, that comes to land only to breed; its breeding-places are on remote and lonely islands not easy of access; and, when breeding, the bird is nocturnal in habits, and it would be possible for anyone to spend many days in the very midst of a colony of petrels and not see them, or suspect that they were there. ”

“ Petre rose. His host rose with him. “A thousand thanks,” he said, “Mr. Petre. We shall only be too pleased. Too pleased.” He nodded, made the slightest possible inclination of his head, and Mr. Petre bowed and was gone. He was conducted back with great ceremony through the deeply-carpeted corridor, past the three engravings of the Mother Bank in 1815, 1852 and Present Day; and as he would have gone hurriedly out past the counter, was gently detained while his courteous, his even obsequious, guardian handed him an oblong check book, which he thrust hurriedly into his pocket as he disappeared. ”

“ Petre rapidly turned over the score of pages. There was a huntsman in a red hat with a feather in it, a very large muzzle-loading gun under his arm, holding a dead fox up by the tail, while his companion blew a horn; there was a lion with a human-looking face holding up his paw to a young man with gooseberry eyes who was pulling a thorn out; there was an old gentleman in a gray tunic pointing towards a star, his gaze followed by a young gentleman in a blue tunic whose face was fatuous beyond the dreams of avarice ”

“ If somebody bought a thing some one else must sell it. It was a relief to understand one thing, anyhow, in the rigmarole. He halted with his back to the light.
“Besides which,” said Terrard, “you don’t want to be bothered with other people. I know you’ll take it or leave it, and I wanted to put it before you now and at once. I don’t know if you’re following our London site-values, Mr. Petre? No doubt you’ve handled such things in your time?”
“It is very good of you,” said Mr. Petre. ”

“ None of these birds are known to breed anywhere along the east coast of England or Scotland. The typical Petrels may be readily identified by the sooty-black plumage, relieved by a patch of white across the rump and the upper tail-coverts. These small Petrels rarely alight upon the sea to swim notwithstanding their webbed feet. They flutter often close to the big waves, and may then be seen to drop their legs downwards and to pat the water with their feet, seeming sometimes literally to run down the glassy surface of some huge roller. ”

“ A man’s judgment in such suffering is that of a thing hunted, unbased, perhaps instinctive, at any rate precipitate; and Charlie was astonished to hear the words solemnly and simply pronounced by the standing figure at the window, who looked at him with a sort of forensic severity.
“Well, Mr. Terrard, you have convinced me.”
“Mr. Petre, Mr. Petre,” said Charlie Terrard in the agony of his relief and the whirlwind of such expectations suddenly realized. “I am undertaking a great responsibility! ”

“ Petre.
The Medical Genius restrained his temper, determined—he was a conscientious man—to do his best by the impossible fellow, and started anew.
“I must now,” he continued, putting on a look of much greater importance than he had yet assumed, and settling himself up in his chair, “I must now, my dear sir, put to you a very intimate question indeed; it is one which we always have to ask at this stage of our inquiries.” (Mr. Petre marveled what that stage exactly was. But he was wise enough to remain silent.) “Do you dream?”
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Petre cheerfully. He was all right now ”

“ Then Peter denied again, and immediately the cock crew, Then said the damsel that kept the door, unto Peter, Art not thou also one of this man's disciples? he saith, I am not, but denied, saying, I know not the man, neither understand I what thou sayest. And he went out into the porch, and the cock crew; but he began to curse and swear, saying, I know not this man of whom ye speak. When Peter had gotten some feeling in his conscience, he went out and wept bitterly. 'Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame,' I Cor. ”