: The Profiteers by Oppenheim E Phillips Edward Phillips - Detective and mystery stories

@FreeBooksTue 06 Jun, 2023

Posted in: #FreeBooks #FreeBooksIndia #FreeBooksApp #gg

Vote Up Vote Down

THE PROFITEERS

BY E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM

The Marchioness of Amesbury was giving a garden party in the spacious but somewhat urban grounds of her mansion in Kensington. Perhaps because it was the first affair of its sort of the season, and perhaps, also, because Cecilia Amesbury had the knack of making friends in every walk of life, it was remarkably well attended. Two stockbrokers, Roger Kendrick and his friend Maurice White, who had escaped from the City a little earlier than usual, and had shared a taxicab up west, congratulated themselves upon having found a quiet and shady seat where iced drinks were procurable and the crush was not so great.

"Anything doing in your market to-day?" Kendrick asked his younger associate.

White made a little grimace.

Kendrick contemplated the tips of his patent boots. He was a well-looking, well-turned-out and well-to-do representative of the occupation which he, his father and grandfather had followed,--ten years older, perhaps, than his companion, but remarkably well-preserved. He had made money and kept it.

"They say that Rockefeller's at the back of them," he remarked.

"They may say what they like but who's to prove it?" his young companion argued. "They must have enormous backing, of course, but until they declare it, I'm not pushing the business. Look at the Board on their merits, Ken."

"Let me see, who are the other directors?" Kendrick enquired.

"Well, there's young Stanley Rees, Phipps' nephew, who came in for three hundred thousand pounds a few years ago," Maurice White answered; "old skinflint Martin, who may be worth half a million but certainly not more; and Dredlinton. Dredlinton's rabbit, of course. He hasn't got a bob. There's money enough amongst the rest for any ordinary business undertaking, if only one could understand what the mischief they were up to. They can't corner wheat in this country."

"I wonder," Kendrick murmured. "The harvests last year were bad all over the world, you know, and this year, except in the States and Canada, they will be worse. With another fifty million it might be done."

"I should say their greatest risk was Government interference," Kendrick observed. "Gambling in foodstuffs ought to be forbidden."

Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg

Login to post a comment!