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He went on into the City, ordered one or two things which he had set down in his memorandum before starting, looked in at a City Club where he knew one or two items of news were awaiting him, and slowly betook himself to the offices of the Van Diemens Company. He had thoroughly planned out the scheme of that morning’s work; it needed no recapitulation in his mind, yet as his habit was, just before opening the door of the Board Room, in the few seconds of going up the stairs, he briefly presented his scheme of tactics to his own mind.

The Directors must ask the shareholders for fresh capital; a nominal million, an increase of 25 per cent. upon the value of the shares at par. That was the first point.

The second point was the object for which this levy should nominally be demanded. On that also he had made up his mind. Paton had quite unconsciously suggested to him the master idea; a little belt of untravelled and unknown country (locally known as the “Out and Out”) wherein the degraded Kawangas—so Paton had told him, and after all Paton had been there—held their orgies in Mutchi-time, alone separated Perks’ Bay from the Straits, and the long detour which all traffic must now make between the coaling station and the high road to the East, could be cut off by a line crossing that region. Paton had assured him with immense enthusiasm that such a line would give its possessor the strategic key to the gate of everything East of the Bay of Bengal, and, what was more important in Sir Charles’ eyes than Paton’s own opinion, a vast mass of gentlemen in the suburbs of London and perhaps five-sixths of the journalists in Fleet Street, were ready to rally to the idea. It had been well preached and well dinned in.