Jasper Thrale, in the partial exposition of his philosophy (if that description is not too large for such vague imaginings), had included very definite reference to certain “higher forces” to which he had attributed peculiar powers of interference in humanity’s management of its own concerns. Doubtless these powers had control of various instruments, and were able to exercise their influence in any direction and by any means. In the present case it would seem that they were working in devious and subtle ways—and in this at least they differed not at all from the methods attributable to that we have called Providence, or the Laws of Nature; any assumed guide or irrefragible, incomprehensible ordination. It is a common characteristic of these forces that they seem able to control the inconceivably great and the inconceivably small with equal certitude.

Not that George Gosling touched any limits. He was moderately large in body and small in intellect, but neither the physical excess nor the mental deficiency marked him out from his fellow men. In the office, indeed, he was regarded by the firm and his colleagues as a capable man of business whose embonpoint was quite consistent with his employment by a firm of wholesale provision merchants.

On the Thursday morning that saw the announcement in the morning papers that a case of the new plague was reported in Berlin, Gosling was called into the partners’ private office on some matter of accountancy.

The senior partner of Barker and Prince was eager, grasping and imaginative; his name had originally been German, and ended, in “stein,” but he had changed it for the convenience of his English connexion. Prince was a large rubicund man, friendly and noisy in his manners, but accounted a shrewd buyer.

It was not until Gosling was about to depart that the higher forces turned their attention to Barbican and then they suddenly urged Gosling to say, without premeditation on his part,

“I see there’s a case of this ’ere new plague in Berlin.”

Mr Prince laughed and winked at his subordinate. “Some of us’ll have to start a hareem, soon; who knows?” he said, and laughed again, more loudly than ever.

“I suppose you haf not heard any other reports, eh?” asked Mr Barker.

“Well, curiously enough, I ’ave,” said Gosling. “A young feller who used to lodge with us five years back, come ’ome from Russia about a fortnight since, and ’e tells me as the plague’s spreadin’ like wildfire in Russia.”

Mr Prince laughed again, and Mr Barker seemed about to turn his attention to other matters, when the higher forces sent Gosling the one great inspiration of his life. It came to him with startling suddenness, but he gave utterance to it as simply and with as little verve as he spoke his “good morning” to the office-boy.

“I been thinkin’, sir,” he said (he had never once thought of it until this moment), “as it might be well to keep a neye on this plague, so to speak.”

“Ah! Zo?” said Mr Barker; a phrase which Gosling correctly interpreted as the expression of a desire for the elucidation of his last remark.

“Well, I been thinkin’, if you’ll excuse me, sir,” he went on, “as though the plague’s only in the bud, so to speak, at the present time, it seems very likely to spread so far as we can judge; and that what with quarantine, p’raps, and p’raps shortage of labour and so on, it might mean ’igher prices for our stuff.”

“Zo!” said Mr Barker, but this time the monosyllable was reflective. The great inspiration had found fruitful soil.

“Brince,” continued Barker after a minute’s thought, “I haf a flair. We will buy heavily at once. But not through our London house, no; or others will follow us too quickly. You must not go, we will zend Ztewart from Dundee, it will zeem that we prepare for the zhipping strike in the north. We buy heavily; yes? I haf a flair.”

“But, I say,” said Mr Prince, who had the greatest confidence in his partner’s insight, “I say, Barker, d’you think this plague’s serious?”

“I am putting money on it, ain’t I?” asked Barker.

Prince and Gosling exchanged a scared glance. Until that moment it had not come home to either of them that it was possible for English affairs to be affected by this strange and deadly disease.

The remainder of the conversation was complicated and exceedingly technical.

When he came back into the counting-house, Gosling looked unnaturally thoughtful.

“Anything gorne wrong?” asked his crony, Flack.

“There’s nothing wrong with the ’ouse, if that’s what you mean,” replied Gosling mysteriously.

“What then?” asked Flack.

“It’s this ’ere new plague,” returned Gosling.

“Tchah! That’s all my eye,” said Flack. He was a narrow-chested, high-shouldered man of sixty, with a thin grey beard, and he had a consistently incredulous mind.

Out here in the counting-house, Gosling’s thrill of fear was rapidly subsiding, and he had no intention of passing over his own important part in the house’s decision to buy for a rise; so he bulged out his cheeks, shook his head and said:

“Not by a long chalk it ain’t, Flack; not by a long chalk. There was that young feller, Thrale, as I was tellin’ you about; ’e gave me a hidea or two, and now s’mornin’ we ’ave this very serious news from Berlin.”

“Papers ’ave to make the worst of everything,” said Flack. “It’s their livin’.”

“Anyways,” continued Gosling, “I put it quite straight to the ’ouse this mornin’, as we might do worse under the circumstances than buy ’eavily....”

“You did?” asked Flack, and he cocked up his spectacles and looked at Gosling underneath them.

“I did,” replied Gosling.

“What did Mr Barker say to that?” asked Flack.

“He took my advice.”

“Lord’s sakes, you don’t tell me so?” said Flack, his spectacles on his forehead.

“I’m now about to dictate various letters to our ’ouse in Dundee,” replied Gosling, dropping his voice to a whisper, and assuming an air of mysterious importance, “advising them to send our Mr Stewart to Vienna immediate, from where ’e is to proceed to Berlin. ’E is, also, to ’ave private instructions from the ’ouse as to the extent of ‘is buyin’—which I may tell you in confidence, Flack, will be enormous—e-normous.” Gosling raised his head slowly on the first syllable, brought it down with a jerk on the second, and left the third largely to the imagination.

“But d’yer mean to tell me,” expostulated Flack, “as all this is on account of this plague? They been usin’ that as a blind, my boy.”

Gosling laid a bunch of swollen fingers on his colleague’s arm. “I tell you, Flack, old boy,” he said, “that this is serious. When Mr Barker took up my advice, as ’e did very quick, Mr Prince said, ‘You don’t tell me as you really take this plague serious, Barker?’ ’e said. And Mr Barker looked up and says, ‘I’m goin’ to put all my money on it.’” Gosling paused and then repeated, “Mr Barker says as ’e’s goin’ to put all our money on it, Flack.”

“Lord’s sakes!” said Flack. Here, indeed, was an argument strong enough to break down even his consistent incredulity. “But d’yer mean to tell me,” he persisted, “that Mr Barker thinks as it’ll come to England?”

“We-el, you know,” returned Gosling, “we need not, p’raps go quite so far as that. But it may go far enough to interfere with European markets, there may be trouble with quarantine, and such-like....”

“Ah, well, that,” said Flack with an air of relief. “Jus’ so, jus’ so. Mr Barker can see as far through a brick wall as most people, and so I’ve always said.” He dropped his spectacles on to his nose again, and returned to his interrupted accountancy.

Gosling went fussily into his own room and rang for his typist—a competent and presentable young woman, among whose duties that of turning her superior’s letters into equivalent English was not the lightest.

Gosling was very full of importance that day, and during lunch he wore the air of a man who had secret and valuable information. He was too well versed in City methods and too loyal to his own house to give any hint of Barker and Prince’s speculations in Austria and Germany; but when the subject of the new plague inevitably came into the conversation, he spoke with an authority that was heightened by the hint of reserve implicit in his every dictum.

When the latest joke on the subject, fresh from the Stock Exchange, had been retailed by one of the usual group of lunchers, and had been received with the guffaws it merited, Gosling suddenly screwed his face to an unaccustomed seriousness and said, “But it’s serious, you know, extremely serious.”

And by degrees, from this and many other better informed sources, the rumour ran through the City that the new plague was serious, extremely serious. That afternoon there was a slight drop of prices in certain industrial shares, and a slight rise in wheat and some other imported food stuffs; fluctuations which could not be attributed to ordinary causes. Mr Barker’s foresight was justified once again in the eyes of Gosling and Flack. Before five o’clock another letter was posted to Dundee, enforcing haste.

In the bosom of his family that evening, Gosling was a little pompous, and talked of economy. But his wife and daughters, although they assumed an air of interest, were quite convinced that the head of the house in Wisteria Grove was making the most of a rumour for his own purposes.

As Blanche said to Millie, later, father was always finding some excuse for keeping them short of dress money. That five pounds had proved inadequate to supply even their immediate necessities, and they were already meditating another attack.

“We simply must get another three pounds somehow,” said Millie. And Blanche quite agreed with her.