If you'd like anything forwarded,
sir, leave it here and we shall attend to it."
It was now clear beyond doubt that Lars Larssen was playing a game of
unparalleled audacity. He had somehow arranged to impersonate the "dead"
Clifford Matheson, and was using the impersonation to float the Hudson
Bay scheme on his own lines.
Riviere flushed with anger at the realization of how Lars Larssen was
using his name.
But that was a trifle compared with the main issue. When he had fought
Lars Larssen, it was not a mere petty squabble over a division of loot.
The Hudson Bay scheme was no mere commercial machine for grinding out a
ten per cent. profit. If successful, it meant an entire re-organization
of the wheat traffic between Canada and Great Britain. It meant, in
kernel, the control of Britain's bread-supply. It affected directly
fifty millions of his fellow-countrymen.
For that reason Riviere had refused to lend his name to a scheme under
which Lars Larssen would hold the reins of control. He knew the
ruthlessness of the man and his overweening lust of power, which had
passed the bounds of ordinary ambition and had become a Napoleonic
egomania.
In refusing to act on the Board, Riviere had made an altruistic
decision. But now the same problem confronted him again in a different
guise. If he remained silent, the scheme would in all probability be
floated in his name to a successful issue. If he remained silent, he
would be betraying fifty millions of his fellow-countrymen.
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