CHAPTER VI
THE COMPANY TAKES PROCEEDINGS TO COLLECT A DEBT
For the next fortnight the Company did nothing. We watched Amalgamated Fertilizers sink and sink, as Honest John Driver and Gutermann unloaded their shares, and Chelubai and Bottiger made a few hundreds by selling for the account. I levied toll on those hundreds for the Children's Hospital. Doubtless Honest John Driver got four days' start of Gutermann in the operation, for it was not till the fifth morning that we saw in the papers paragraphs headed "Mysterious Disappearance of a Financier," and read that that respected citizen and imperialist of East Surbiton, Mr. Albert Amsted Pudleigh, had left his office at five on the previous Friday and vanished into the ewigkeit or some such spacious lair. This brief account was followed in every paper by a description of the rascal so flattering that his mother, in her most partial mood, could by no chance have recognized him. Since he had but reached the rank of two hundred thousand pounds, the papers only accorded him paragraphs for a day or two, and paid no further heed to his vanishing. For
