IN the noon hour of the following day was enacted the brief final scene
in the drama of the “Rubber Consols corner.”
For long weeks, Mr. Stormont Thorpe had given much thought to this
approaching climax of his great adventure--looking forward to it both
as the crowning event of his life, and as the dawn of a new existence in
some novel, enchanted world. It was to bring his triumph, and even more,
his release. It was at once to crown him as a hero and chieftain among
City men, and transfigure him into a being for whom all City things were
an abomination. In his waking hours, the conflict between these aims did
not specially force itself upon his attention: he mused upon, and spun
fancies about, either one indifferently, and they seemed not at all
irreconcilable. But his dreams were full of warfare,--wearily saturated
with strife, and endless endeavour to do things which could not be
done, and panic-stricken terrors before the shadow of shapeless
calamities,--until he dreaded to go to sleep. Then he discovered that
an extra two glasses of whiskey-and-water would solve that particular
difficulty, and send him into prompt, leaden slumber--but the early
mornings remained as torturing as ever. In the twilight he awoke
oppressed and sick at heart with gloom--and then dozed at intervals
through fantastic new ordeals of anguish and shame and fear, till it was
decently possible to get up.
Then, indeed, the big cold sponge on his head and spine scattered these
foolish troubles like chaff, and restored to him his citizenship among
the realities. He dressed with returning equanimity, and was almost
cheerful by the time he thrust his razor into the hot water. Yet
increasingly he was conscious of the wear and strain of it all, and
increasingly the date, September twelfth, loomed before him with a
portentous individuality of its own.
This day grew to mean so much more to him than had all the other days
of the dead years together that he woke in the darkness of its opening
hours, and did not get satisfactorily to sleep again. His vigil,
however, was for the once free from grief. He drowsily awaited the
morning in vague mental comfort; he had recurring haphazard indolent
glimpses of a protecting fact standing guard just outside the portals
of consciousness--the fact that the great day was here. He rose early,
breakfasted well, and walked by the Embankment to the City, where at
ten he had a few words with Semple, and afterward caused himself to be
denied to ordinary callers. He paced up and down the Board Room for the
better part of the ensuing two hours, luxuriating in the general sense
of satisfaction in the proximity of the climax, rather than pretending
to himself that he was thinking out its details. He had provided in his
plans of the day for a visit from Messrs. Rostocker and Aronson, which
should constitute the dramatic finale of the “corner,” and he looked
forward to this meeting with a certain eagerness of expectation. Yet
even here he thought broadly of the scene as a whole, and asked himself
no questions about words and phrases. It seemed to be taken for granted
in his mind that the scene itself would be theatrically impressive, even
spectacular.
In the event, this long-awaited culmination proved to be disappointingly
flat and commonplace. It was over before Thorpe had said any
considerable proportion of the things he saw afterward that he had
intended to say. The two men came as he had expected they would--and
they bought their way out of the tragic “corner” at precisely the price
he had nominated in his mind. But hardly anything else went as he had
dimly prefigured it.
Mr. Rostocker was a yellow-haired man, and Mr. Aronson was as dark as a
Moor, and no physical resemblance of features or form suggested itself
to the comparing eye, yet Thorpe even now, when they stood brusquely
silent before him, with their carefully-brushed hats pulled down over
their eyes, stuck to it in his own mind that it was hard to tell them
apart. To the end, there was something impersonal in his feeling toward
them. They, for their part, coldly abstained from exhibiting a sign of
feeling about him, good, bad, or indifferent.
It was the man with the fair hair and little curly flaxen beard who
spoke: “How do you do! I understand that we can buy eight thousand five
hundred Rubber Consols from you at 'twenty-three.'”
“No--twenty-five,” replied Thorpe.
The dark man spoke: “The jobbers' price is twenty-three.”
“To carry over--yes,” Thorpe answered. “But to buy it is twenty-five.”
The two sons of the race which invented mental arithmetic exchanged an
alert glance, and looked at the floor for an engrossed instant.
“I don't mind telling you,” Thorpe interposed upon their silence, “I put
on that extra two pounds because you got up that story about applying to
the Stock Exchange Committee on a charge of fraud.”
“We didn't get up any story,” said Rostocker, curtly.
“You tried to plant it on us,” Aronson declared.
“One of your own Directors put it about. I thought it was a fake at the
time.”
This view of the episode took Thorpe by surprise. As it seemed, in
passing, to involve a compliment to his own strategic powers, he
accepted it without comment. “Well--it is twenty-five, anyway,” he told
them, with firmness.
“Twenty-four,” suggested Aronson, after another momentary pause.
“Not a shilling less than twenty-five,” Thorpe insisted, with quiet
doggedness.
“We can always pay our creditors and let you whistle,” Rostocker
reminded him, laconically.
“You can do anything you like,” was the reply, “except buy Rubber
Consols under twenty-five. It doesn't matter a fig to me whether you go
bankrupt or not. It would suit me as well to have you two 'hammered' as
to take your money.” Upon the spur of a sudden thought he drew out his
watch. “In just two minutes' time to a tick, the price will be thirty.”
“Let's be 'hammered' then!” said Aronson to his companion, with
simulated impulsiveness.
Rostocker was the older and stronger man, and when at last he spoke it
was with the decision of one in authority. “It is your game,” he
said, with grave imperturbability. “Eight thousand five hundred at
twenty-five. Will you deliver at the Credit Lyonnais in half an hour?”
Thorpe nodded, impassively. Then a roving idea of genial impertinence
brought a gleam to his eye. “If you should happen to want more Rubber
Consols at any time,” he said, with a tentative chuckle, “I could
probably let you have them at a reduced price.”
The two received the pleasantry without a smile, but to Thorpe's
astonishment one of them seemed to discern something in it beside
banter. It was Rostocker who said: “Perhaps we may make a deal with
you,” and apparently meant it.
They went out at this, ignoring ceremony upon their exit as stolidly as
they had done upon their entrance, and a moment later Thorpe called in
the Secretary, and despatched a messenger to bring Semple from Capel
Court. The formalities of this final transfer of shares had been
dictated to the former, and he had gone off on the business, before the
Broker arrived.
Thorpe stood waiting near the door, and held out his hand with a
dramatically significant gesture when the little Scotchman entered. “Put
her there!” he exclaimed heartily, with an exuberant reversion to the
slang of remote transatlantic bonhomie.
“Yeh've done it, then!” said Semple, his sharp face softening with
pleasure at the news. “Yeh've pulled it off at twenty-three!”
The other's big countenance yielded itself to a boyish grin.
“Twenty-FIVE!” he said, and laughed aloud. “After you left this morning,
it kind o' occurred to me that I'd raise it a couple of pounds. I found
I was madder about those pieces in the newspapers than I thought I was,
and so I took an extra seventeen thousand pounds on that account.”
“God above!” Semple ejaculated, with a satisfaction through which signs
of an earlier fright were visible. “It was touch-and-go if you didn't
lose it all by doing that! You risked everything, man!”
Thorpe ponderously shrugged his shoulders. “Well--I did it, anyhow, and
it came off,” was his comment. Then, straightening himself, he drew a
long, long breath, and beamed down at the little man. “Think of it! God!
It's actually all over! And NOW perhaps we won't have a drink! Hell!
Let's send out for some champagne!” His finger was hovering over the
bell, when the Broker's dissuading voice arrested it. “No, no!” Semple
urged. “I wouldn't touch it. It's no fit drink for the daytime--and it's
a scandal in an office. Your clerks will aye blab it about hither and
yon, and nothing harms a man's reputation more in the City.”
“Oh, to hell with the City!” cried Thorpe, joyously. “I'm never going to
set foot in it again. Think of that! I mean it!”
None the less, he abandoned the idea of sending out for wine, and
contented himself with the resources of the cabinet instead. After some
friendly pressure, Semple consented to join him in a brandy-and-soda,
though he continued to protest between sips that at such an hour it was
an indecent practice.
“It's the ruin of many a strong man,” he moralized, looking rather
pointedly at Thorpe over his glass. “It's the principal danger that
besets the verra successful man. He's too busily occupied to take
exercise, and he's too anxious and worried to get his proper sleep--but
he can always drink! In one sense, I'm not sorry to think that you're
leaving the City.”
“Oh, it never hurts me,” Thorpe said, indifferently accepting the
direction of the homily. “I'm as strong as an ox. But all the same, I
shall be better in every way for getting out of this hole. Thank God, I
can get off to Scotland tomorrow. But I say, Semple, what's the matter
with your visiting me at my place there? I'll give you the greatest
shooting and fishing you ever heard of.”
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 damn,” the other blithely assured
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 damned 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 assurance 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 shillings for the majority of the shares, and
reconstitute 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 assume 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.
“Reconstitute 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
damned 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
glasses 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 noble 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 heirship, 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 class
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 coarse, soft paper.
The premonition, then, had justified itself! Something had told him that
the telegram was an evil thing. A vaguely superstitious 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 embarrassing 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
crass 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 passed 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.