Mammon and Co Part 29

THE FIRST DEAL

Mr. Alington was an early riser, and it was barely half-past eight when he finished his plain but excellent breakfast the morning after he had received Jack's telegram about Kit's venture in Carmel East. A certain instinct of perfection was characteristic of him; all his habits of living were of a finished character. He lived plainly, and he would sooner have his simple eggs and bacon off fine china, with alternate mouthfuls of admirably crisp toast and the freshest b.u.t.ter, than have rioted in the feasts of Caligula with a napkin ever so slightly stained.

The same snowfall which had blocked the line between Tilehurst and Goring had not spared London, and the streets on this Sunday morning were dumb and heavy with snow. Gangs of men were out at work clearing it away, and streaks and squares of brown, muddy pavement and roadway of contrasted sordidness were being disclosed in the solid whiteness of the street. Mr. Alington, looking from his window, was afraid that these efforts were likely to prove but lost labour, for the sky was still thick and overlaid with that soft, greasy look which portends more snow, and in spite of the hour, it was but an apology for twilight on to which he looked out. This thought was an appreciable pang to him. The street was empty but for the street-clearers, and had attained that degree of discomfort only realized in London after a snowfall. The gaunt, gray-faced houses opposite showed lights twinkling in their windows, and the yellow, unluminous atmosphere was like a jaundiced dream. The palace clock at the bottom of the street was still lit within, but it was no more than a blurred moon through the clogged air.

But Mr. Alington, after his first comprehensive glance, gave but little attention to these atrocities of climate. His reading-lamp shone cheerily on his desk, and on the very satisfactory papers lying there, and Carmel basked in a temperate suns.h.i.+ne. For up till now the ways of the new group had entirely fulfilled his expectations, which from the beginning had been sanguine, and the best, so he hoped, was yet to be.

The scheme which he had formed in the summer, and which he had talked over with Jack in September, had been simple, ingenious, and on the safe side of excessive sharpness. The dear, delightful public, as he had foreseen, was quite willing to fall in with his scheme, and had seconded his plans for general enrichment--particularly his own--with openhanded patronage. The scheme in brief was as follows, had the public only known:

It will be remembered that he had formed two companies, Carmel, and Carmel East and West, with capitals respectively of three hundred thousand and five hundred thousand pounds. Carmel East and West had exhibited remarkable fluctuations, as Kit knew to her loss, Alington, and Jack following his advice, to their gain, and the way in which this had been worked was simplicity itself. The shares had been issued at par, and had risen almost immediately to twenty-five s.h.i.+llings. This Alington was disposed to put down partly to his own reputation and as the result of reports from the mine, but chiefly--for he was modest even when alone--to the effect of his n.o.ble body of directors. He as vendor had fifty thousand shares fully paid, and at this point he sold out, unloading very carefully under several names, and taking a very decent little profit for a man of simple tastes and butler-like appearance. The natural effect of this extensive sale was to cause the shares to drop, and the downward tendency was accelerated by unpromising news from the mine, which followed immediately on his sale. The ore, as stated in the prospectus, was refractory, and extracting it was both costly and yielded a very small percentage of gold. Mr. Alington, whom several large holders and substantial City men consulted about this time, was not sanguine. The results were bad, there was no denying it. Three weeks of a dropping market brought the shares to the condition they were in on that day of November on which Kit sold out for the first time, and they closed at thirteen and ninepence sellers, fourteen and threepence buyers. This seemed to Alington to be low enough for his second step, as he did not want the market to lose confidence altogether. He sent a telegram out to his manager in Australia, Mr. Linkwood, laconic, but to that intelligent fellow perfectly comprehensible:

"New process.--ALINGTON," it ran.

He also sent one to Mr. Richard Chava.s.se:

"Invest."

The next morning he received from Mr. Linkwood the following reply:

"Carmel East. Ninety per cent. of gold extracted by Bulow process.

Strong support by Australian markets.--LINKWOOD."

Now, the evening before certain large purchases in Carmel East had been made in England, not by the names under which Mr. Alington had previously unloaded, for the weakness of such a course was obvious, and he followed them up the next morning by a very large purchase in his own name, and by the publication of his telegram from Mr. Linkwood. He also saw several business men, to whom he gave a full explanation. He had telegraphed, he said with absolute truth, to his manager to try the Bulow process, and, as they saw, it had yielded admirable results.

Instead of twenty, they got ninety per cent. of the gold out. Concerning the strong support of the Australian markets, they would no doubt receive further news by cable. He had no information later than that telegram which he had published.

The effect of this on a market already predisposed to go a-booming after Westralians was natural and inevitable. The shares went up nearly a half during the day, and next morning when a further private cable, instantly made public, recorded that that shrewdest of financiers, Mr. Richard Chava.s.se, had bought to the extent of forty thousand pounds, they ran past thirty s.h.i.+llings.

A week later they stood at two pounds, owing to steady support from private investors. There was a spurious report that a dividend might be expected, so extraordinary successful had the month's crus.h.i.+ng proved to be, and this was the unfortunate moment selected by Kit to make her second purchase. Simultaneously Alington, who for a week past had been very carefully unloading, telegraphed to Jack to do the same, and sold out largely under his own name. A week pa.s.sed, and the shares moved slowly back, depressed by these large sales, though there was still a considerable demand for them in England. Then came another telegram from Australia, saying the mine looked much less hopeful. The vein which they had been working so successfully for the past two or three months came suddenly to an end, owing to a dip in the strata, and if struck again, it could probably be struck only at a much deeper level. This would entail considerable development. Following on this came large sales in Australia, Mr. Richard Chava.s.se (in consequence of a wire from England) being among them, and the shares went down to nineteen s.h.i.+llings. Then the possibility of a war between England and France depressed them still further, and they subsided quietly to fourteen s.h.i.+llings, where, for all that Mr. Alington at present cared, they were at liberty to remain. Thus closed the first act of the great deal, leaving a suspicious market.

Such was the position on this Sunday morning with regard to Carmel East and West when Mr. Alington looked out on the snow-m.u.f.fled street. He had been to a concert the afternoon before, where they had performed Palestrina's Ma.s.s in B flat and fragments of those sweet, austere melodies still haunted his head. Like many men who have a great apt.i.tude for figures, he had a marvellous musical memory, and sitting down at his piano, he recalled gently several of the airs. That was the music which really appealed to him, pure, simple melody of a sacred kind. No one regretted more than he the utter decadence of English music, its fall from its natural genius, which came to perfection, so he considered, under the divine Purcell. It had become _decla.s.se_, in the most awful sense of that awful word. An exotic German growth had spread like some parasitic plant over it; the native taste was still there, and every now and then Parry, or some of his immediate school, would give one an air which was worthy of the English best, but otherwise everyone seemed emulous of indefinitely multiplying the most chaotic of Wagner, or the music of those people whose names ended in "owski." Then, and still from memory, by an act of unconscious cerebration, he played the last chorus out of "Blest Pair of Syrens," and, closing the piano, got up and went to his desk with tear-dimmed eyes, in harmony with himself.

He had antic.i.p.ated events with the precision of a great general. The market had rushed, like starving folk when a granary is opened, at Carmel East and West, and after they had reached their highest point, and the big sales began, there had followed something like a panic. West Australian mines were still new to the public, and the greater financiers viewed them with suspicion. This sudden scare over Carmel East and West suited Mr. Alington exactly, for it would be sure to bring down the price of the second Carmel group--namely, the North, South, and Central mines. He had seen this six months ago, and had worked for this very end. At present he had no holdings in Mount Carmel, except those shares which he held to qualify as a director, and he had delayed any purchase in them till the panic created by the mercurial behaviour of the sister group should have brought down the price. The lower it went, the better would he be pleased, for he intended to make a coup over this compared to which what he had pocketed over Carmel East and West should be a mere bagatelle. But for Carmel he required no advent.i.tious aid from marquises, and consequently the sudden resignation of Tom Abbotsworthy from his board, which event had taken place the day before, did not trouble him at all, nor did he care to know what cause "his regret to find that press of work prevented him" covered. The mine he knew was a magnificent property, quite able to stand on its own feet, and in the prospectus he had purposely understated its probable value. In doing so, he was altogether free from possible censure; the mine had seemed to him promising, and he had said so, and when the shares were suitably low he intended to buy all he could lay hands on. Purposely, also, he had undercapitalized it; eventually he meant to issue fresh shares. The five hundred thousand pounds already subscribed was not more than sufficient to work Carmel North, and both Mount Carmel and Carmel South of the same group he believed to be as remunerative as the others. The panic over Carmel East and West had already affected the other group, and yesterday evening the one-pound shares, after a week's decline, stood at fifteen s.h.i.+llings. He proposed to let them go down, if they kindly would, till they had sunk to ten s.h.i.+llings or thereabouts, then buy for all he was worth, and send a telegram to Mr. Richard Chava.s.se to do the same. And at the thought of Mr. Richard Chava.s.se he put his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, leaned back in his chair, and laughed aloud with a great mellowness of sound.

In certain respects Mr. Alington, for all his staid conversation and butler-like appearance, was a true humorist; in this instance, at any rate, that he alone should appreciate his own joke was sufficient for him, and he required no sympathizer. Indeed, it would have spoiled it all if other people had been able to appreciate it. Though a modest man, he considered the Chava.s.se joke very entertaining, and the Chava.s.se joke was all his own, and the point of it as follows:

Some years ago, out in Australia, he had a Swiss valet, a clever, neat-handed rogue in his way, who one night was sufficiently ill-advised to open the house to burglars. But the alarm was given. Mr. Alington, with a revolver and pyjamas, came mildly but firmly downstairs, and though the burglars escaped, he held his valet in the hollow of his hand. The man stood detected, and, hoping to make the best of his miscarried job, confessed his complicity to his master. Mr. Alington made him give his confession in writing, and sent it to his bank for safe keeping, but for the time took no further steps.

But not long before the formation of this new company, four or five months only before his own departure for England, he parted company with his servant, who left Melbourne at once. Three months afterwards a gentleman with a fine moustache and a short beard appeared--a personal friend, it would seem, of Mr. Alington's, and a man of wealth, interested in Australian mines. A few weeks only after his arrival Mr.

Alington left for England. Mr. Richard Chava.s.se, however, remained, cultivated and linguistic, and lived in Alington's house at, it was supposed, a suitable rent. Altogether he may be best described as a creation.

Here, again, as in so many of the dealings of Providence with man, Mr.

Alington often marvelled to see the working of all things together towards good. In the first instance there had not been wanting to his forbearance to give Mr. Richard Chava.s.se over to the police a vague feeling of compa.s.sion at the thought of those deft, s.h.i.+rt-studding hands given over bleeding to oak.u.m-picking and the sewing of mail-bags; and how amply was that sweet pity rewarded! A man bound to him by fear was a far safer repository for the large sums of money, amounting sometimes to forty or fifty thousand pounds, over which Mr. Chava.s.se had control, than someone over whom he held no such check. Should Mr. Chava.s.se attempt to get off with the money, or even--so stringent were Alington's regulations for the strict and sober conduct of his life--leave the colony, a wired word from him to the bank would place the ex-valet's confession of complicity in the burglary in the hands of the police.

Alington, in fact, had speculated largely in Chava.s.ses, and he had the wit to see from the beginning that the more comfortable position he gave him, the more man of wealth and mark he made him, the securer he himself would be. A beggar with power of attorney may easily decamp with the spoils, and possibly baffle pursuit, but for the solid man interested in mines, though slightly recluse and exclusive, it is hardly possible to evade capture. Besides, who in their senses would not prefer to live delicately than to dodge detectives? Certainly Mr. Chava.s.se was completely in his senses, and did not attempt escape. What Alington meant to do with him after the grand coup in Carmels he had not yet certainly determined.

In the interval Mr. Chava.s.se, ex-valet, lived in his house in Melbourne rent-free, and cost Mr. Alington perhaps eighty pounds a month. But how admirable an investment was that; and how small a percentage of his coinings for his master did that eighty pounds a month represent!

Already it had often happened, as in the case of Carmel East, that Alington in England wanted to run up the price of some mine, and strong support in Australia was exactly what was needed to give a hesitating market confidence. Thus he exercised a dual control: here in England, no doubt, many investors followed his lead, for he was known to be an extremely shrewd man, with the instinct bred of knowledge equalled by none, and invariably his purchases seemed to herald a general advance.

For as surely as Mr. Alington bought in London, so surely did a cable go out to Mr. Chava.s.se, "Invest balance," or "Invest half balance," and in due course came the answer, not necessarily to Alington--indeed, seldom to him--"Strong support in Australia." The plan was simple--all practical plans are: the valet had his choice between two courses of life--the one to live extremely comfortably in Alington's delightful house in Melbourne, pa.s.sing pleasant, independent days, and occasionally, as the telegram came from England, making large purchases for this mine or that, or selling still in obedience; the other, to leave his comfortable house, and start off in an attempt to outrun the detectives: for as surely as he tried to escape, so surely would his confession lying at the bank pa.s.s into the hands of the police. Once a month, indeed, he had to send to England the statement of his accounts, and now and then he had been told that his cigar-bill was too large, or that whisky-and-soda for lunch would be a pleasant change from an expensive Moselle. On leaving Australia, Mr. Alington had transferred to him absolutely certain shares, certificates and balance at the Melbourne bank in payment, it was supposed, of some large purchase; and not infrequently he could, if he chose, draw a cheque for as much as fifty thousand pounds to self. Thus, for a few weeks, perhaps, he would be able to career over the world; but from that moment he would be Mr.

Richard Chava.s.se no longer, that solid, linguistic gentleman, but the man Chava.s.se, earnestly wanted by the police for burglary.

There was risk on both sides. Alington knew that to convict the man, if he was so insane as to try to escape, meant exposure of his own side of the bargain and good-bye to the dual control. In his heart of hearts, indeed, he had hardly determined what to do should Chava.s.se make so deplorable a blunder. No doubt he could be caught, no doubt his ident.i.ty could be proved, and he could be landed in the place of tread-mills and oak.u.m-picking, but there would be other revelations as well, not all touching Chava.s.se. However, he never seriously contemplated such possibilities, for he did not believe that the man would ever try to escape. He was comfortable where he was, and comfortable people will think twice before they risk a prosecution for burglary. Alington was far too acute to think of frightening him or keeping him continually cowering; exasperation might drive him to this undesirable ruin.

Instead, he gave him a very fair allowance, and complaints as to the length of his cigar-bill were few. Indeed, he had gauged the immediate intentions of his ex-valet very correctly. Mr. Richard Chava.s.se had no present thoughts of attempting to liberate himself from his extremely tolerable servitude, and probably get in exchange something far less soft, while that confession of his lay at the bank. He had the dislike of risks common to men who have been detected once. If, however, he could by any plan, not yet formulated, manage to remove those risks, his conscience, he felt, would not tell him that he was bound in grat.i.tude to Mr. Alington never to do anything for himself.

This morning, as Alington sat working in his well-lighted room, or looked out with kind and absent gaze into the snowy, sordid street, or laughed with pleasure at the thought of Mr. Richard Chava.s.se, he felt extremely secure, and humbly thankful to the Providence which had so guided his feet into the ways of respectability and wealth. Without being a miser in the ordinary usage of the word, he had that inordinate pa.s.sion (in his case for money) which marks the monomaniac. Yet he remained extremely sane; his willingness to provide himself not only with the necessaries but also the luxuries which money will buy, remained, in spite of his pa.s.sion for it, unimpaired. He was not extravagant, for extravagance, like other excess, was foreign to his mild and well-regulated nature, and had not been induced by the possession of wealth, but a scarce print he seldom left unpurchased. He gave, moreover, largely to charitable inst.i.tutions, and the giving of money to deserving objects was a genuine pleasure to him, quite apart from the satisfaction he undoubtedly felt at seeing his name head a subscription list. In addition to his own great pa.s.sion also, he had a thousand tastes and interests, a gift that even genius itself often lacks, and it may have been these on the one hand pulling against the l.u.s.t for money on the other that kept him so well-balanced, just as the telegraph post is kept straight by the strain on both sides. As well as the one great thing, the world held for him hundreds of desirable objects, and the hours in which he was not devoted to his business were not, as they are to so many, a blank and a pause. He closed his ledger and opened the pa.s.sion music; he shut his piano and untied his portfolio of prints, and his sleek, respectable face would glow with inward delight at each. A certain kindliness of disposition, which was part of his nature, it must be confessed, he kept apart when he was engaged in business. This lived in an attic and never descended the stairs if he was at his desk. To give an instance, he had not the slightest impulse to help Kit in her difficulty, though a word from him would have shown her how in the next few months to make good her losses. She had chosen to mix herself up in business, and he became a business man from head to heels. It even gave him a little pleasure to see her flounder in so stranded a fas.h.i.+on, for he had not effaced, and did not mean to efface, from his mind the very shabby thing she had chosen to do to him on the night of the baccarat affair. Being very wealthy, it did not really matter to him whether she cheated him of a hundred pounds or a threepenny-bit, but he quite distinctly objected to being cheated of either. Had the last trump summoned him on the moment to the open judgment-books, he might have sworn truthfully enough that he had forgiven her, for he did not ever intend to make her suffer for it, even if he had the opportunity of doing so. Certainly he forgave her; he would not ever attempt to revenge himself on her, and he had not told a soul about it.

But her difficulties aroused no compa.s.sion in him, nor would they have done so even if she had never cheated him at baccarat. Business is business, and a statue of sentiment has no niche hewn in the mining market. One can do one's kindnesses afterwards, he said to himself, and, to do him justice, he often did.

For the present there was a lull in the Carmel transaction, and after a very short spell at the ledgers Mr. Alington closed them with a sigh.

There were several receipts lying on his table, and he took them up, read each, and docketed it. One was for a considerable sum of money paid to a political agency. He hesitated a moment before putting the docket on it, and finally wrote on the top left-hand corner:

"Baronetcy."

CHAPTER III

LILY DRAWS A CHEQUE

Toby was sitting after breakfast in the dining-room of his house in town reading the Times. It had been settled for him by Lily before their marriage that he was to have some sort of a profession, and, the choice being left to him, he had chosen politics. He was proposing to stand for a perfectly safe borough in about a month's time, and though hitherto he had known nothing whatever about the public management of his country's affairs, since he was going to take a hand in them himself, he now set himself, or had set for him, day by day to read the papers. He had just got through the political leaders in the Times with infinite labour, and had turned with a sigh of relief for a short interval to the far more human police reports, when Lily came in with a note in her hand.

"Good boy," she said approvingly, and Toby rustled quickly back to the leaders again.

"A most important speech by the Screamer," he announced, honouring by this name a prominent member of the Cabinet. "He seems to suggest an Anglo-Russo-Germanic-French-Italian-American alliance, and says with some justice that it ought to be a very fairly powerful combination. It is directed, as far as I can make out, against Mr. and Mrs. Kruger."

Lily looked over his shoulder for a moment, and saw the justice of the _resume_.

"Yes, read it all very carefully, very carefully indeed, Toby," she said. "But just attend to me a moment first; I shan't keep you."

Toby put down the paper with alacrity. The Sportsman tumbled out from underneath it, but he concealed this with the dexterity bred of practice.

"What is it?" he asked, vexed at the interruption, you would have said, but patient of it.

"Toby, speaking purely in the abstract, what do you do if a man wants to borrow money from you?" she asked.

"In the abstract I am delighted to lend it to him," he said. "In the concrete I tell him I haven't got a penny, as a rule."

"I see," said Lily; "but if you had, you would lend it him?"

"Yes; for, supposing that it is the right sort of person who asks you for money, it is rather a compliment. It must be a difficult thing to do, and it implies a sort of intimacy."

"And if it is the wrong sort of person?" asked Lily.

"The wrong sort of person has usually just that shred of self-respect that prevents him asking you."

Lily sighed, and pulled his hair gently, rather struck by his penetration, but not wis.h.i.+ng to acknowledge it.

"Door-mats--door-mats!" she observed.

"All right; but why be personal? Who wants to borrow money from you, Lily?"