II

The Unfortunate Financier

"The secret of success," said Simon Templar profoundly, "is never to do anything by halves. If you try to touch someone for a tenner, you probably get snubbed; but if you put on a silk hat and a false stomach and go into the City to raise a million-pound loan, people fall over each other in the rush to hand you blank cheques. The wretched little thief who pinches a handful of silver spoons gets shoved into clink through a perfect orgy of congratulations to the police and the magistrates, but the bird who diddles the public of a few hundred thousands by legal methods gets knighthood. A sound buccaneering business has to be run on the same principles."

While he could not have claimed any earth-shaking originality for the theme of his sermon, Simon Templar was in the perhaps rarer position of being able to claim that he practised what he preached. He had been doing it for so long, with so much diligence and devotion, that the name of the Saint had passed into the Valhalla of all great names: it had become a household word, even as the name of Miss Amelia Bloomer, an earlier crusader, was absorbed into the tongue that Shakespeare did not live long enough to speak — but in a more romantic context. And if there were many more sharks in the broad lagoons of technically legal righteousness who knew him better by his chosen nom de guerre than by his real name, and who would not even have recognised him had they passed him in the street, that minor degree of anonymity was an asset in the Saint's profession which more than compensated him for the concurrent gaps in his publicity.

Mr. Wallington Titus Oates was another gentleman who did nothing by halves.

He was a large red-faced man who looked exactly like a City alderman or a master butcher, with a beefy solidity about him which disarmed suspicion. It was preposterous, his victims thought, in the early and extensive stages of their ignorance, that such an obvious rough diamond, such a jovial hail-fellow-well-met, such an almost startlingly lifelike incarnation of the cartoonist's figure of John Bull, could be a practitioner of cunning and deceit. Even about his rather unusual names he was delightfully frank. If he had been an American he would certainly have called himself Wallington T. Oates, and the "T" would have been shrouded in a mystery that might have embraced anything from Thomas to Tamerlane. In the more reserved manner of the Englishman, who does not have a Christian name until you have known him for twenty-five years, he might without exciting extraordinary curiosity have been known simply as W. T. Oates. But he was not. His cards were printed W. Titus Oates; and he was not even insistent on the preliminary "W." He was, in fact, best pleased to be known as plain Titus Oates, and would chortle heartily over his chances of tracing a pedigree back to the notorious inventor of the Popish Plot who was whipped from Aldgate to Newgate and from Newgate to Tyburn some three hundred years ago.

But apart from the fact that some people would have given much to apply the same discouraging treatment to Mr. Wallington Titus Oates, he had little else in common with his putative ancestor. For although the better-known Titus Oates stood in the pillory outside the Royal Exchange before his dolorous tour, it was not recorded that he was interested in the dealings within; whereas the present Stock Exchange was Mr. Wallington Titus Oates's happy hunting ground.

If there was anything that W. Titus Oates understood from A to whatever letter can be invented after Z, it was the manipulation of shares. Bulls and bears were his domestic pets. Mergers and debentures were his bedfellows. It might almost be said that he danced contangos in his sleep. And it was all very profitable — so profitable that Mr. Oates possessed not only three Rolls-Royces but also a liberal allowance of pocket-money to spend on the collection of postage stamps which was his joy and relaxation.

This is not to be taken to mean that Mr. Oates was known in the City as a narrow evader of the law. He was, on the contrary, a highly respected and influential man; for it is one of the sublime subtleties of the law of England that whilst the manipulation of the form of racehorses is a hideous crime, to be rewarded with expulsion from the most boring clubs and other forms of condign punishment, the manipulation of share values is a noble and righteous occupation by which the large entrance fees to such clubs may commendably be obtained, provided that the method of juggling is genteel and smooth. Mr. Oates's form as a juggler was notably genteel and smooth; and the ambition of certain citizens to whip Mr. Oates at a cart's tail from Aldgate to Newgate was based not so much on the knowledge of any actual fraud as on the fact that the small investments which represented the life savings had on occasion been skittled down the market in the course of Mr. Oates's important operations, which every right-thinking person will agree was a very unsporting and un-British attitude to take.

The elementary principles of share manipulation are, of course, simplicity itself. If large blocks of a certain share are thrown on the market from various quarters, the word goes round that the stock is bad, the small investor takes fright and dashes in to cut his losses, thereby making matters worse, and the price of the share falls according to the first law of supply and demand. If, on the other hand, there is heavy buying in a certain share, the word goes round that it is a "good thing," the small speculator jumps in for a quick profit, adding his weight to the snowball, and the price goes up according to the same law. This is the foundation system on which all speculative operators work; but Mr. Oates had his own ways of accelerating these reactions.

"Nobody can say that Titus Oates ain't an honest man," he used to say to the very exclusive circle of confederates who shared his confidence and a reasonable proportion of his profits. "P'raps I am a bit smarter than some of the others, but that's their funeral. You don't know what tricks they get up to behind the scenes, but nobody knows what tricks I get up to, either. It's all in the day's work."

He was thinking along the same lines on a certain morning, while he waited for his associates to arrive for the conference at which the final details of the manoeuvre on which he was working at that time would be decided. It was the biggest manipulation he had attempted so far, and it involved a trick that sailed much closer to the wind than anything he had done before; but it has already been explained that he was not a man who did things by halves. The economic depression which had bogged down the market for many months past, and the resultant steadfast refusal of stocks to soar appreciably however stimulated by legitimate and near-legitimate means, had been very bad for his business as well as others. Now, envisaging the first symptoms of an upturn, he was preparing to cash in on it to an extent that would compensate for many months of failure; and with so much lost ground to make up he had no time for half measures. Yet he knew that there were a few tense days ahead of him.

A discreet knock on his door, heralding the end of thought and the beginning of action, was almost a relief. His new secretary entered in answer to his curt summons, and his eyes rested on her slim figure for a moment with unalloyed pleasure — she was a remarkably beautiful girl with natural honey-golden hair and entrancing blue eyes which in Mr. Oates's dreams had sometimes been known to gaze with Dietrichesque yearning upon his unattractive person.

"Mr. Hammel and Mr. Costello are here," she said.

Mr. Oates nodded.

"Bring them in, my dear." He rummaged thoughtfully through his pockets and produced a crumpled five-pound note, which he pushed towards her. "And buy yourself some silk stockings when you go out to lunch — just as a little gift from me. You've been a good gal. Some night next week, when I'm not working so hard, we might have dinner together, eh?"

"Thank you, Mr. Oates," she said softly, and left him with a sweet smile which started strange wrigglings within him.

When they had dinner together he would make her call him Titus, he thought, and rubbed his hands over the romantic prospect. But before that happy night he had much to do; and the entrance of Hammel and Costello brought him back to the stern consideration of how that dinner and many others, with silk stockings and orchids to match, were to be paid for.

Mr. Jules Hammel was a small rotund gentleman whose rimless spectacles gave him a benign and owlish appearance, like somebody's very juvenile uncle. Mr. Abe Costello was longer and much more cadaverous, and he wore a pencil-line of hair across his upper lip with a certain undercurrent of self-consciousness which might have made one think that he went about in the constant embarrassing fear of being mistaken for Clark Gable. Actually their resemblance to any such harmless characters was illusory — they were nearly as cunning as Mr. Oates himself, and not even a trifle less unscrupulous.

"Well, boys," said Mr. Oates, breaking the ice jovially, "I found another good thing last night."

"Buy or sell?" asked Costello alertly.

"Buy," said Mr. Oates. "I bought it. As far as I can find out, there are only about a dozen in the world. The issue was corrected the day after it came out."

Hammel helped himself to a cigar and frowned puzzledly.

"What is this?"

"A German 5-pfenning with the Befreiungstag overprint inverted and spelt with a P instead of a B," explained Mr. Oates. "That's a stamp you could get a hundred pounds for any day."

His guests exchanged tolerant glances. While they lighted their Partagas they allowed Mr. Oates to expatiate on the beauties of his acquisition with all the extravagant zeal of the rabid collector; but as soon as the smokes were going Costello recalled the meeting to its agenda.

"Well," he said casually, "Midorients are down to 25."

"24," said Mr. Oates. "I rang up my brokers just before you came in and told them to sell another block. They'll be down to 23 or 22 after lunch. We've shifted them pretty well."

"When do we start buying?" asked Hammel.

"At 22. And you'll have to do it quickly. The wires are being sent off at lunch-time tomorrow, and the news will be in the papers before the Exchange closes."

Mr. Oates paced the floor steadily, marshalling the facts of the situation for an audience which was already conversant with them.

The Midorient Company owned large and unproductive concessions in Mesopotamia. Many years ago its fields had flowed with seemingly inexhaustible quantities of oil of excellent quality, and the stock had paid its original holders several thousand times over. But suddenly, on account of those abstruse and unpredictable geological causes to which such things are subject, the supply had petered out. Frenzied boring had failed to produce results. The output had dropped to a paltry few hundred barrels which sufficed to pay dividends of two per cent on the stock — no more, and, as a slight tempering of the wind to the shorn stockholders, no less. The shares had adjusted their market value accordingly. Boring had continued ever since, without showing any improvement; and indeed the shares had depreciated still further during the past fortnight as a result of persistent rumours that even the small output which had for a long while saved the stock from becoming entirely derelict was drying up — rumours which, as omniscient chroniclers of these events, we are able to trace back to the ingenious agency of Mr. Titus Oates.

That was sufficient to send the moribund stock down to the price at which Messrs. Oates, Costello, and Hammel desired to buy it. The boom on which they would make their profit called for more organisation, and involved the slight deception on which Mr. Oates was basing his gamble.

Travelling in Mesopotamia at that moment there was an English tourist named Ischolskov, and it is a matter of importance that he was there entirely at Mr. Oates's instigation and expense. During his visit he had contrived to learn the names of the correspondents of the important newspaper and news agencies in that region, and at the appointed time it would be his duty to send off similarly worded cablegrams, signed with the names of these correspondents, which would report to London that the Midorient Company's engineers had struck oil again — had, in fact, tapped a gigantic gusher of petroleum that would make the first phenomenal output of the Midorient Oil Fields look like the dribbling of a baby on its bib.

"Let's see," said Mr. Oates. "This is Tuesday. We buy today and tomorrow morning at 22 or even less. The shares'll start to go up tomorrow afternoon. They'll go up more on Thursday. By Friday morning they ought to be around 45 — they might even go to 50. They'll hang fire there. The first boom will be over, and people will be waiting for more information."

"What about the directors?" queried Hammel.

"They'll get a wire too, of course, signed by the manager on the spot. And don't forget that I'm a director. Every penny I have is tied up in that company — it's my company, lock, stock, and barrel. They'll call a special meeting, and I'll know exactly what they're doing about it. Of course they'll cable the manager for more details, but I can arrange to see that his reply don't get through to them before Friday lunch."

Costello fingered his wispy moustache.

"And we sell out on Friday morning," he said.

Mr. Oates nodded emphatically.

"We do more than sell out. We sell ourselves short, and unload twice as much stock as we're holding. The story'll get all over England over the week-end, and when the Exchange opens on Monday morning the shares'll be two a penny. We make our profit both ways."

"It's a big risk," said Hammel seriously.

"Well, I'm taking it for you, ain't I?" said Mr. Oates. "All you have to do is to help me spread the buying and selling about, so it don't look too much like a one-man deal. I'm standing to take all the knocks. But it can't go wrong. I've used Ischolskov before — I've got too much on him for him to try and double-cross me, and besides he's getting paid plenty. My being on the Midorient board makes it watertight. I'm taken in the same as the rest of 'em, and I'm hit as hard as they are. You're doing all the buying and selling from now on — there won't be a single deal in my name that anyone can prove against me. And whatever happens, don't sell till I give you the wire. I'll be the first to know when the crash is coming, and we'll hold out till the last moment."

They talked for an hour longer, after which they went out to a belated but celebratory lunch.

Mr. Oates left his office early that afternoon, and therefore he did not even think of the movements of his new secretary when she went home. But if he had been privileged to observe them, he would have been very little wiser; for Mr. Oates was one of the numerous people who knew the Saint only by name, and if he had seen the sinewy sunburned young man who met her at Piccadilly Circus and bore her off for a cocktail he might have suffered a pang of jealousy, but he would have had no cause for alarm.

"We must have an Old Fashioned, Pat," said the Saint, when they were settled in Oddenino's. "The occasion calls for one. There's a wicked look in your eye that tells me you have some news. Have you sown a few more wild Oates?"

"Must you?" she protested weakly.

"Shall we get him an owl?" Simon suggested.

"What for?" asked Patricia unguardedly.

"It would be rather nice," said the Saint reflectively, "to get Titus an owl."

Patricia Holm shuddered.

Over the cocktails and stuffed olives, however, she relented.

"It's started," she said. "Hammel and Costello had a long conference with him this morning. I suppose they finished it after lunch, but I'd heard enough before they went out."

She told him every detail of the discussion that had taken place in Mr. Titus Oates's private office, and Simon Templar smiled approvingly as he listened. Taken in conjunction with what he already knew, the summaries of various other conversations which she had reported to him, it left him with the whole structure of the conspiracy clearly catalogued in his mind.

"You must remember to take that microphone out of his office first thing in the morning," he remarked. "It might spoil things if Titus came across it, and I don't think you'll need to listen any more… Here, where did you get that from?"

"From sowing my wild Oates," said Patricia angelically, as the waitress departed with a five-pound note on her tray.

Simon Templar regarded her admiringly.

"Darling," he said at length, "there are no limits to your virtues. If you're as rich as that, you can not only buy me another Old Fashioned but you can take me to dinner at the Barcelona as well."

On the way to the restaurant he bought an Evening Standard and opened it at the table.

"Midorient closed at 21," he said. "It looks as if we shall have to name a ward in our Old Age Home for Retired Burglars after Comrade Oates."

"How much shall we make if we buy and sell with him?" asked the girl.

The Saint smiled.

"I'm afraid we should lose a lot of money," he said. "You see, Titus isn't going to sell."

She stared at him, mystified; and he closed the menu and laughed at her silently.

"Did you by any chance hear Titus boasting about a stamp he bought for his collection last night?" he asked, and she nodded. "Well, old darling, I'm the bird who sold it to him. I never thought I should sink to philatelism even in my dotage, but in this case it seemed the best way to work. Titus is already convinced that I'm the greatest stamp-sleuth in captivity, and when he hears about the twopenny blue Mauritius I've discovered for him he will be fairly purring through the town. I don't see any reason why our Mr. Oates should go unpunished for his sins and make a fortune out of this low swindle. He collects stamps, but I've got an even better hobby. I collect queer friends." The Saint was lighting a cigarette, and his blue eyes danced over the match. "Now listen carefully while I tell you the next move."

Mr. Wallington Titus Oates was gloating fruitily over the closing prices on the Friday evening when his telephone bell rang.

He had reason to gloat. The news story provided by the cablegrams of Mr. Ischolskov had been so admirably worded that it had hit the front page of every afternoon edition the previous day; and a jumpy market had done the rest. The results exceeded his most optimistic estimates. On the Wednesday night Midorients had closed at 32, and dealings in the street had taken them up to 34. They opened on Thursday morning at 38, and went to 50 before noon. One lunch edition ran a special topical article on fortunes made in oil, the sun shone brilliantly, England declared for 537 for six wickets in the first Test, all the brokers and jobbers felt happy, and Midorients finally went to 61 at the close. Moreover, in the evening paper which Mr. Oates was reading there could not be found a breath of suspicion directed against the news which had caused the boom. The Midorient directors had issued a statement declaring that they were awaiting further details, that their manager on the spot was a reliable man not given to hysterical exaggerations, and that for the moment they were satisfied that prosperity had returned to an oil field which, they pointed out, had merely been suffering a temporary set-back. Mr. Gates had had much to do with the wording of the statement himself; and if it erred somewhat on the side of optimism, the error could not by any stretch of imagination have been described as criminal misrepresentation.

And when Mr. Oates picked up his receiver and heard what it had to say, his cup was filled to overflowing.

"I've got you that twopenny blue," sad a voice which he recognised. "It's a peach! It must be one of the most perfect specimens in existence — and it'll only cost you nine hundred quid."

Mr. Oates gripped the receiver, and his eyes lighted up with the unearthly fire which illumines the stare of the collector when he sees a coveted trophy within his grasp. It was, in its way, a no less starkly primitive manifestation than the dilating nostrils of a bloodhound hot on the scent.

"Where is it?" barked Mr. Oates, in the baying voice of the same hound. "When can I see it? Can you bring it round? Have you got it yourself? Where is it?

"Well, that's the snag, Mr. Oates," said the Saint apologetically. "The owner won't let it go. He won't even let it out of his safe until it's paid for. He says he's got to have a cheque in his pocket before he'll let me take it away. He's a crotchety old bird, and I think he's afraid I might light a cigarette with it or something."

Mr. Oates fairly quivered with suppressed emotion.

"Well, where does he live?" he yelped. "I'll settle him. I'll go round and see him at once. What's his name? What's the address?"

"His name is Dr. Jethero," Simon answered methodically, "and he lives at 105 Matlock Gardens, Netting Hill. I think you'll catch him there — I've only just left him, and he said nothing about going out."

"Dr. Jethero — 105 — Matlock — Gardens — Notting — Hill," repeated Mr. Oates, reaching for a message pad and scribbling frantically.

"By the way," said the Saint, "I said he was crotchety, but you may think he's just potty. He's got some sort of a bee in his bonnet about people trying to get in and steal his stamp, and he told me that if you want to call and see him you've got to give a password."

"A password?" bleated Mr. Oates.

"Yes. I told him that everybody knew Titus Oates, but apparently that wasn't good enough for him. If you go there you've got to say 'I was whipped from Aldgate to Newgate and from Newgate to Tyburn.' Can you remember that?"

"Of course," said Mr. Oates indignantly. "I know all about that. Titus Oates was an ancestor of mine. Come and see me in the morning, my dear boy — I'll have a present waiting for you. Good-bye."

Mr. Oates slammed back the receiver and leapt up as if unleashed. Dithering with ecstasy and excitement, he stuffed his note of the address into his pocket, grabbed a cheque-book, and dashed out into the night.

The taxi ride to his destination seemed interminable, and when he got there he was in such a state of expectant rapture that he flung the driver a pound note and scurried up the steps without waiting for change. The house was one of those unwieldly Victorian edifices with which the west of London is encumbered against all hopes of modern development; and in the dim street lighting he did not notice that all the windows were barred, nor would he have been likely to speculate upon the reasons for that peculiar feature if he had noticed it.

The door was opened by a white-coated man, and Mr. Oates almost bowled him over as he dashed past him into the hall.

"I want Dr. Jethero," he bayed. "I'm Titus Oates!"

The man closed the door and looked at him curiously.

"Mr. Titus Oates, sir?"

"Yes!" roared the financier impatiently. "Titus Oates. Tell him I was whipped from Aldgate to Newgate, and from Newgate to Tyburn. And hurry up!"

The man nodded perfunctorily, and edged past him at a cautious distance of which Mr. Oates was too wrought up to see the implications.

"Yes, sir. Will you wait in here a moment, sir?"

Mr. Oates was ushered into a barely furnished distempered room and left there. With an effort he fussed himself down to a superficial calm — he was Titus Oates, a power in the City, and he must conduct himself accordingly. Dr. Jethero might misunderstand a blundering excitement. If he was crotchety, and perhaps even potty, he must be handled with tact. Mr. Oates strode up and down the room, working off his overflow of excitement. There was a faint characteristic flavour of iodoform in the air, but Mr. Oates did not even notice that.

Footsteps sounded along the hall, and the door opened again. This time it admitted a grey-bearded man who also wore a white coat. His keen spectacled eyes examined the financier calmly. Mr. Oates mustered all his self-control.

"I am Titus Oates," he said with simple dignity.

The grey-bearded man nodded.

"You wanted to see me?" he said; and Mr. Oates recalled his instructions again.

"Titus Oates," he repeated gravely. "I was whipped from Aldgate to Newgate, and from Newgate to Tyburn."

Dr. Jethero studied him for a moment longer, and glanced towards the door, where the white-coated attendant was waiting unobtrusively — Mr. Oates had not even noticed the oddity of that.

"Yes, yes," he said soothingly. "And you were pilloried in Palace Yard, weren't you?"

"That's right," said Mr. Oates eagerly. "And outside the Royal Exchange. They put me in prison for life, but they let me out at the Revolution and gave me my pension back."

Dr. Jethero made clucking noises with his tongue.

"I see. A very unfortunate business. Would you mind coming this way, Mr. Oates?"

He led the way up the stairs, and Mr. Oates followed him blissfully. The whole rigmarole seemed very childish, but if it pleased Dr. Jethero, Mr. Oates was prepared to go to any lengths to humour him. The white-coated attendant followed Mr. Oates. Dr. Jethero opened the door of a room on the second floor, and stood aside for Mr. Oates to pass in. The door had a barred grille in its upper panels through which the interior of the room could be observed from the outside, an eccentricity which Mr. Oates was still ready to accept as being in keeping with the character of his host.

It was the interior of the room into which he was shown that began to place an excessive strain on his adaptability. It was without furnishings of any kind, unless the thick kind of mattress in one corner could be called furnishings, and the walls and floor were finished in some extraordinary style of decoration which made them look like quilted upholstery.

Mr. Oates looked about him, and turned puzzledly to his host.

"Well," he said, "where's the stamp?"

"What stamp?" asked Dr. Jethero.

Mr. Oates's laboriously achieved restraint was wearing thin again.

"Don't you understand? I'm Titus Oates. I was whipped from Aldgate to Newgate, and from Newgate to Tyburn. Didn't you hear what I said?"

"Yes, yes, yes," murmured the doctor peaceably. "You're Titus Oates. You stood in the pillory and they pelted you with rotten eggs."

"Well," said Mr. Oates, "what about the stamp?"

Dr. Jethero cleared his throat.

"Just a minute, Mr. Oates. Suppose we go into that presently. Would you mind taking off your coat and shoes?"

Mr. Oates gaped at him.

"This is going too far," he protested. "I'm Titus Oates. Everybody know Titus Oates. You remember — the Popish Plot—"

"Mr. Oates," said the doctor sternly, "will you take off your coat and shoes?"

The white-coated attendant was advancing stealthily towards him, and a sudden vague fear seized on the financier. Now he began to see the reason for the man's extraordinary behaviour. He was not crotchety. He was potty. He was worse — he must be a raving homicidal lunatic. Heaven knew what he would be doing next. A wild desire to be away from number 105 Matlock Gardens gripped Mr. Oates — a desire that could not even be quelled by the urge to possess a twopenny blue Mauritius in perfect preservation.

"Never mind," said Mr. Oates liberally. "I'm not really interested. I don't collect stamps at all. I'm just Titus Oates. Everyone knows me. I'm sure you'll excuse me — I have an appointment—"

He was edging towards the door, but Dr. Jethero stood in the way.

"Nobody's going to hurt you, Mr. Oates," he said; and then he caught the desperate gleam in Mr. Oates's eye, and signed quickly to the attendant.

Mr. Oates was seized suddenly from behind in a deft grip. Overcome with terror, he struggled like a maniac, and he was a big man; but he was helpless in the expert hands that held him. He was tripped and flung to the floor, and pinioned there with practised skill. Through whirling mists of horror he saw the doctor coming towards him with a hypodermic syringe, and he was still yelling feebly about the Popish Plot when the needle stabbed into his arm…

Dr. Jethero went downstairs and rang up a number which he had been given.

"I've got your uncle, Mr. Tombs," he announced. "He gave us a bit of trouble, but he's quite safe now."

Simon Templar, who had found the name of Tombs a convenient alias before, grinned invisibly into the transmitter.

"That's splendid. Did he give you a lot of trouble?"

"He was inclined to be violent, but we managed to give him an injection, and when he wakes up he'll be in a strait-jacket. He's really a most interesting case," said the doctor with professional enthusiasm. "Quite apart from the delusion that he is Titus Oates, he seems to have some extraordinary hallucination about a stamp. Had you noticed that before?"

"I hadn't," said the Saint. "You may be able to find out some more about that. Keep him under observation, doctor, and call me again on Monday morning."

He rang off and turned gleefully to Patricia Holm, who was waiting at his elbow.

"Titus is in safe hands," he said. "And now I've got a call of my own to make."

"Who to?" she asked.

He showed her a scrap of paper on which he had jotted down the words of what appeared to be a telegram.

Amazing discovery stop have reason to believe boom may be based on genuine possibilities stop do not on any account sell without hearing from me.

"Dicky Tremayne's in Paris, and he'll send it for me," said the Saint. "A copy goes to Abe Costello and Jules Hammel tonight — I just want to make sure that they follow Titus down the drain. By the way, we shall clear about twenty thousand if Midorients are still at 61 when they open again tomorrow morning."

"But are you sure Jethero won't get into trouble?" she said.

Simon Templar nodded.

"Somehow I feel that Titus will prefer to keep his mouth shut after I've had a little chat with him on Monday, " he said; and it is a matter of history that he was absolutely right.