The Market-Place Part 32

The Broker was thinking of something else. "What is to be the precise position of the Company, in the immediate future?" he asked.

"Company? What Company?"

Semple smiled grimly. "Have you already forgotten that there is such a thing?" he queried, with irony. "Why, man, this Company that paid for this verra fine Board-table," he explained, with his knuckles on its red baize centre.

Thorpe laughed amusedly. "I paid for that out of my own pocket," he said. "For that matter everything about the Company has come out of my pocket----"

"Or gone into it," suggested the other, and they chuckled together.

"But no--you're right," Thorpe declared. "Some thing ought to be settled about the Company, I suppose. Of course I wash my hands of it--but would anybody else want to go on with it? You see its annual working expenses, merely for the office and the Board, foot up nearly 3,000 pounds. I've paid these for this year, but naturally I won't do it again. And would it be worth anybody else's while to do it? Yours, for example?"

"Have you had any explanations with the other Directors?" the Broker asked, thoughtfully.

"Explanations--no," Thorpe told him. "But that's all right. The Marquis has been taken care of, and so has Plowden. They're game to agree to anything. And let's see--Kervick is entirely my man. That leaves Watkin and Davidson--and they don't matter. They're mere guinea-pigs. A few hundreds apiece would shut them up, if you thought it was worth while to give them anything at all."

"And about the property,--the rubber plantation,--that the Company was formed to acquire and develop. I suppose there really is such a plantation?"

"Oh, yes, it's all there right enough," Thorpe said, briefly.

"It's no good, though, is it?" the Broker asked, with affable directness.

"Between ourselves, it isn't worth a d.a.m.n," the other blithely a.s.sured him.

The Scotchman mused with bent brows. "There ought still to be money in it," he said, with an air of conviction.

"By the way," it occurred to Thorpe to mention, "here's something I didn't understand. I told Rostocker here, just as a cheeky kind of joke, that after he and Aronson had got their eight thousand five hundred, if they thought they'd like still more shares, I'd let 'em have 'em at a bargain--and he seemed to take it seriously. He did for a fact. Said perhaps he could make a deal with me."

"Hm-m!" said Semple, reflectively. "I'll see if he says anything to me. Very likely he's spotted some way of taking the thing over, and reorganizing it, and giving it another run over the course. I'll think it out. And now I must be off. Aren't you lunching?"

"No--I'll have the boy bring in some sandwiches," Thorpe decided. "I want my next meal west of Temple Bar when I get round to it. I've soured on the City for keeps."

"I wouldn't say that it had been so bad to you, either," Semple smilingly suggested, as he turned to the door.

Thorpe grinned in satisfied comment. "Hurry back as soon as you've finally settled with Rostocker and the other fellow," he called after him, and began pacing the floor again.

It was nearly four o'clock when these two men, again together in the Board Room, and having finished the inspection of some papers on the desk, sat upright and looked at each other in tacit recognition that final words were to be spoken.

"Well, Semple," Thorpe began, after that significant little pause, "I want to say that I'm d.a.m.ned glad you've done so well for yourself in this affair. You've been as straight as a die to me,--I owe it as much to you as I do to myself,--and if you don't think you've got enough even now, I want you to say so."

He had spoken in tones of sincere liking, and the other answered him in kind. "I have more than I ever dreamed of making in a lifetime when I came to London," he declared. "If my father were alive, and heard me tell him that in one year, out of a single transaction, I had cleared over sixty-five thousand pounds, he'd be fit to doubt the existence of a Supreme Being. I'm obliged to you for your good words, Thorpe. It's not only been profitable to work with you, but it has been a great education and a great pleasure as well."

Thorpe nodded his appreciation. "I'm going to ask a favour of you," he said. "I want to leave the general run of my investments and interests here in your hands, to keep track of I don't want to speculate at all, in the ordinary meaning of the word. Even after I bury a pot of money in non-productive real estate, I shall have an income of 50,000 pounds at the very least, and perhaps twice as much. There's no fun in gambling when you've got such a bank as that behind you. But if there are good, wise changes to be made in investments, or if things turn up in the way of chances that I ought to know about, I want to feel that you're on the spot watching things and doing things in my interest. And as it won't be regular broker's work, I shall want to pay you a stated sum--whatever you think is right."

"That will arrange itself easily enough," said Semple. "I shall have the greatest pleasure in caring for whatever you put in my hands. And I think I can promise that it will be none the worse for the keeping."

"I don't need any a.s.surance on that score," Thorpe declared, cordially.

"You're the one sterling, honest man I've known in the City."

It was the Broker's turn to make a little acknowledging bow. His eyes gleamed frank satisfaction at being so well understood. "I think I see the way that more money can be made out of the Company," he said, abruptly changing the subject. "I've had but a few words with Rostocker about it--but it's clear to me that he has a plan. He will be coming to you with a proposition."

"Well, he won't find me, then," interposed Thorpe, with a comfortable smile. "I leave all that to you."

"I suspect that his plan," continued Semple, "is to make a sub-rosa offer of a few s.h.i.+llings for the majority of the shares, and reconst.i.tute the Board, and then form another Company to buy the property and good-will of the old one at a handsome price. Now if that would be a good thing for him to do, it would be a good thing for me to do. I shall go over it all carefully, in detail, this evening. And I suppose, if I see my way clear before me, than I may rely upon your good feeling in the matter. I would do all the work and a.s.sume all the risk, and, let us say, divide any profits equally--you in turn giving me a free hand with all your shares, and your influence with the Directors."

"I'll do better still," Thorpe told him, upon brief reflection.

"Reconst.i.tute the Board and make Lord Plowden Chairman,--I don't imagine the Marquis would have the nerve to go on with it,--and I'll make a free gift of my shares to you two--half and half. You'll find him all right to work with,--if you can only get him up in the morning,--and I've kind o' promised him something of the sort. Does that suit you?" Semple's countenance was thoughtful rather than enthusiastic. "I'm more skeptical about Lords than you are," he observed, "but if he's amenable, and understands that his part is to do what I tell him to do, I've no doubt we shall hit it off together."

"Oh, absolutely!" said Thorpe, with confidence. "I'll see to it that he behaves like a lamb. You're to have an absolutely free hand. You're to do what you like,--wind the Company up, or sell it out, or rig it up under a new name and catch a new set of gudgeons with it,--whatever you d.a.m.ned please. When I trust a man, I trust him."

The two friends, their faces brightened and their voices mellowed by this serene consciousness of their mutual trust in each other's loyalty and integrity, dwelt no further upon these halcyon beginnings of a fresh plan for plundering the public. They spoke instead on personal topics--of the possibility of Semple's coming to Scotland during the autumn, and of the chance of Thorpe's wintering abroad. All at once Thorpe found himself disclosing the fact of his forthcoming marriage, though he did not mention the name of the lady's father, and under the gracious stress of this announcement they drank again, and clinked gla.s.ses fervently. When Semple at last took his leave, they shook hands with the deep-eyed earnestness of comrades who have been through battle and faced death together.

It was not until Thorpe stood alone that the full realizing sense of what the day meant seemed to come to him. Fruition was finally complete: the last winnowing of the great harvest had been added to the pile.

Positively nothing remained for him but to enter and enjoy!

He found it curiously difficult to grasp the thought in its entirety. He stood the master of unlimited leisure for the rest of his life, and of power to enrich that life with everything that money could buy,--but there was an odd inability to feel about it as he knew he ought to feel.

Somehow, for some unaccountable reason, an absurd depression hovered about over his mind, darkening it with formless shadows. It was as if he were sorry that the work was all finished--that there was nothing more for him to do. But that was too foolish, and he tried to thrust it from him. He said with angry decision to himself that he had never liked the work; that it had all been unpleasant and grinding drudgery, tolerable only as a means to an end; that now this end had been reached, he wanted never to lay eyes on the City again.

Let him dwell instead upon the things he did want to lay eyes upon. Some travel no doubt he would like, but not too much; certainly no more than his wife would cheerfully accept as a minimum. He desired rather to rest among his own possessions. To be lord of the manor at Pellesley Court, with his own retinue of servants and dependents and tenants, his own thousands of rich acres, his own splendid old timber, his own fat stock and fleet horses and abundant covers and prize kennels--THAT was what most truly appealed to him. It was not at all certain that he would hunt; break-neck adventure in the saddle scarcely attracted him. But there was no reason in the world why he should not breed racing horses, and create for himself a distinguished and even lofty position on the Turf. He had never cared much about races or racing folk himself, but when the Prince and Lord Rosebery and people like that went in for winning the Derby, there clearly must be something fascinating in it.

Then Parliament, of course; he did not waver at all from his old if vague conception of a seat in Parliament as a natural part of the outfit of a powerful country magnate. And in a hundred other ways men should think of him as powerful, and look up to him. He would go to church every Sunday, and sit in the big Squire's pew. He would be a magistrate as a matter of course, and he would make himself felt on the County Council. He would astonish the county by his charities, and in bad years by the munificence of his reductions in rents. Perhaps if there were a particularly bad harvest, he would decline all over his estate to exact any rent whatever. Fancy what a n.o.ble sensation that would make! A Duke could do no more.

It was very clear to him now that he desired to have children of his own,--say two at least, a son and a daughter, or perhaps a son and two daughters: two little girls would be company for each other. As he prefigured these new beings, the son was to exist chiefly for purposes of distinction and the dignity of heirs.h.i.+p, and the paternal relations with him would be always somewhat formal, and, though affectionate, unexpansive. But the little girls--they would put their arms round their father's neck, and walk out with him to see the pigs and the dogs, and be the darlings of his heart. He would be an old man by the time they grew up.

A beatific vision of himself took form in his mind--of himself growing grey and pleasurably tired, surrounded by opulence and the demonstrative respect of everybody, smiling with virtuous content as he strolled along between his two daughters, miracles of beauty and tenderness, holding each by a hand.

The entrance of a clerk broke abruptly upon this daydream. He had a telegram in his hand, and Thorpe, rousing himself with an effort, took the liver-coloured envelope, and looked blankly at it. Some weird apprehension seized upon him, as if he belonged to the peasant cla.s.s which instinctively yokes telegrams and calamities together. He deferred to this feeling enough to nod dismissal to the clerk, and then, when he was again alone, slowly opened the message, and read it:

"Newcastle-on-Tyne, September 12. Our friend died at Edinboro this morning. See you at hotel this evening.--Kervick."

What Thorpe felt at first was that his two daughters had shrunk from him with swift, terrible aversion: they vanished, along with every phase of the bright vision, under a pall of unearthly blackness. He stood in the centre of a chill solitude, staring stupidly at the coa.r.s.e, soft paper.

The premonition, then, had justified itself! Something had told him that the telegram was an evil thing. A vaguely superst.i.tious consciousness of being in the presence of Fate laid hold upon him. His great day of triumph had its blood-stain. A victim had been needful--and to that end poor simple, silly old Tavender was a dead man. Thorpe could see him,--an embarra.s.sing cadaver eyed by strangers who did not know what to do with it,--fatuous even in death.

A sudden rage at Kervick flamed up. He clearly had played the fool--clumsily over-plying the simpleton with drink till he had killed him. The shadow of murder indubitably hung over the thing. And then--the cra.s.s witlessness of telegraphing! Already, doubtless, the police of Edinborough were talking over the wires with Scotland Yard. A reference to a death in Edinborough, in a telegram from Newcastle--it was incredible that this should escape the eye of the authorities. Any minute might bring a detective through that door there--following into the Board Room with his implacable scent the clue of blood. Thorpe's fancy pictured this detective as a momentarily actual presence--tall, lean, cold-eyed, mysteriously calm and fatally wise, the omniscient terror of the magazine short-stories.

He turned faint and sick under a spasm of fright. The menace of enquiry became something more than a threat: he felt it, like the grip of a constable upon his arm. Everything would be mercilessly unravelled. The telegram of the idiot Kervick would bring the police down upon him like a pack of beagles. The beliefs and surmises of the idiot Gafferson would furnish them with the key to everything. He would have his letter from Tavender to show to the detectives--and the Government's smart lawyers would ferret out the rest. The death of Tavender--they could hardly make him responsible for that; but it was the dramatic feature of this death which would inspire them all to dig up everything about the fraud. It was this same sensational added element of the death, too, which would count with a jury. They were always gross, sentimental fools, these juries. They would mix up the death and the deal in Rubber Consols, and in their fat-headed confusion would say "Penal Servitude--fourteen years." Or no, it was the Judge who fixed that. But the Judges were fools, too; they were too conceited, too puffed up with vanity, to take the trouble to understand. He groaned aloud in a nightmare of helplessness.

The sound of his own voice, moaning in his ears, had a magical effect upon him. He lifted his head, gazed about him, and then flushed deeply.

His nerveless cowardice had all at once become unbelievable to himself.

With a shamed frown he straightened himself, and stood thus for a long minute, engrossed in the definite task of chasing these phantoms from his mind. Once a manly front was displayed to them, they slunk away with miraculous facility. He poured out some brandy, and sipped it neat, and laughed scornfully, defiantly, aloud.

He had over half a million--with power and force and courage enough to do with it what he liked. He had fought luck undauntedly, unwearyingly, during all those years when his hands were empty. Was he to tremble and turn tail now, when his hands were full, when he was armoured and weaponed at every point? He was amazed and hurt, and still more enraged, at that fit of girlish weakness which had possessed him. He could have beaten himself with stripes for it. But it could never happen again--never, never!

He told himself that with proud, resolute reiteration, as he got his hat and stick, and put in his pockets one or two papers from the desk, and then glanced about the Board Room for what was, most likely, the last time. Here he had won his great victory over Fate, here he had put his enemies under his feet, and if innocent simpletons had wandered into the company of these foes, it mattered not a whit to him that they also had been crushed. Figuratively, he turned his back upon them now; he left them, slain and trampled, in the Board Room behind him. They no longer concerned him.

Figuratively, too, as he walked with firmness to the door, he stepped over the body of old Tavender, upon the threshold, and bestowed upon it a downward mental glance, and pa.s.sed on. By the time he reached the street, the memory of Tavender had become the merest shred of a myth. As he strode on, it seemed to him that his daughters came again, and took his hands, and moved lovingly beside him--lovingly and still more admiringly than before.