CHAPTER VI
The pictures that have occupied two chapters, flashed and vanished, lasting a few moments only. It was Kay's voice that interrupted them:
"This is my partner, Mr. Blackwood," he was saying, as he came from the dining-room door, accompanied by an undersized little man with sharp, beady eyes set in a face like a rat's, with deep lines upon a skin as white as paper. I shook hands with Billy Bingham, proprietor of the Hub, the man whose disreputable character had made it a disgrace to the City of Churches.
Of the conversation that followed, though I heard every word of it, only a blurred memory remained when we left the building half an hour later. I was in two worlds—innocent Kent and up-to-date Toronto—while Kay and Bingham talked. Mysterious phrases chased pregnant business terms in quick succession: Goodwill, stock in hand, buying liquor at thirty days, cash value of the licence, and heaven knows what else besides. Kay was marvellous, I thought. The sporting goods business had apparently taught him everything. Two hundred per cent. profit, rapid turn over, sell out at top price, were other vivid sentences I caught in part, while I stared and listened, feigning no doubt a comprehension that was not mine. The glow of immense success to come, at any rate, shone somehow about the nasty face of that cunning little Billy Bingham, as he painted our future in radiant colours. Kay was beaming.
"A short period of horror," I remember thinking, for the sanguine fires lit me too, "and we shall be independent men! It's probably worth it. Canada's a free country. What's impossible at home is possible here. Opportunities must be seized . . . !"
Then Bingham's white face retreated, his beady eyes became twin points of glittering light, and another picture
