THE UNKNOWN MR. KENT
meanour. "I don't suppose you did know it. I haven't told any one, and there's not a man working there who isn't a confidential employé of mine. I had reason."
"But we have made money out of all the other state enterprises?" asked the king, anxiously.
"Out of every one of them. Marken, whether it wants to be or not, is due to become one of the richest nations, per capita, in the world."
He laid his pipe to one side, and leaned toward the king in a brisk business attitude.
"Listen," he said, "and I'll tell you what it means. The time had come to eliminate Mr. Provarsk. The very reason we kept him here in the first place was to give him either a chance to make good, or to fix him so that he would be forever harmless. "Well, we've had to take steps to do the latter."
The king shook his head and said, "I don't see how."
"When we opened up the state enterprises, we permitted any one to buy stock in small blocks, didn't we? We held control only. Provarsk tried to bribe my secretary to give him inside information as to what ones would be the most promising, and to which ones we would give the greatest state support. My secretary told me. Already I had decided to drop the mineral water resort project because it couldn't be made to pay. I had my sec-
