A FEW BILLS.
Hitherto, Squire Dudley had, since his connection with Mr. Black,
experienced no shortness of money. The man who spends two years’ income
in one, does not, as a rule, find the pecuniary shoe begin to pinch
until he enters on the second twelvemonth, and realises to himself the
truth that it is impossible both to spend and to have.
There is a time of plenty during which the prodigal wastes his substance
and takes life easily, and then after that comes the season of famine,
when he is fain to content himself with very roots and husks—when,
having once entertained like a prince, he is compelled to expiate his
folly in retirement, and refresh his spirit with herbs of the field, and
water from the brook.
In Joseph’s dream, the seven fat kine preceded the seven lean; the same
rule was observed also in Squire Dudley’s less prudent experience,
though it produced by no means a like result. Never, for many and many a
long year, had Arthur been so flush of cash, and so careless about
expending it, as in the days before Mr. Stewart’s friendly visit.
Lightly come, lightly gone, that was the way with his money then! It is
difficult for a man, such as Arthur Dudley, exactly to realise the fact
that lending his name may eventually prove the hardest day’s work he
ever did in his life; in truth, it is a fact difficult for any one
unacquainted with business, to understand theoretically. It is but a few
strokes of the pen, and the thing is done. Your obliging friend, who has
been kind enough to draw out the document for you, and perhaps even buy
the stamp, gets the paper discounted. He takes out of it what you
promised to let him have, and duly hands over the remainder.
The money is then a certainty—the bill, an illusion, is gone; your
friend will meet it, never fear. He tells you not to trouble your head
about the matter. Like Mr. Black, he will “take a memorandum of it,” and
that memorandum seems to you a perfect security for the genuineness of
the transaction.
Time, however, goes by; the money is spent, the bill is coming due; then
it is the first item which appears the illusion; the latter, the
certainty. Concerning wasted sovereigns and mis-spent five-pound notes,
a useless jeremiade is sung.
If you had but the past to live over again, you think, how differently
you would act; meantime, however, you cannot live the past over again,
and the bill is coming due.
When it does come due, there is only one thing of which you may be
morally certain, namely, that you will have to take it up; that, spite
of your friend’s memorandum and assurances, he will be at the last
moment disappointed, and so disappoint you.
You have had your cake, or at least a portion of that dainty; you have
eaten and digested it; and now comes the time for payment; now come the
anxious days and sleepless nights; now begins the begging, borrowing,
realising; you have within five pounds of the amount required—you might
as well not have a penny; you must scrape those other hundred shillings
together before five o’clock on the evening of the day of presentation,
or else your precious document falls into the notary’s hands. In his
hands there is still another short chance for your credit; but fail to
avail yourself of that, and what ensues?
Mr. Black was the man to have given every possible information on this
subject. I do not think any other human being ever had so many bills
returned to him as he; it is doubtful if any one in the length and
breadth of London had devoted so much time to raising the wind; whether
there ever existed any one who, so almost invariably, never took up his
bills at all, or drove up with what he called the needful to the door of
his bank, at the very stroke almost of four, or rushed away to the other
bank where the bill was lying, or else to the notary’s in Finch Lane.
What a reality dishonoured bills may prove, Mr. Peter Black had, many a
time and oft, personally tested, in the pleasant retirement of the
Cripplegate Hotel.
In the lofty public room of that desirable house of public
entertainment, he had frequently made vows against paper, and mentally
signed the pledge of total abstinence against all accommodation bills,
but vows registered among a number of fellow-victims, amid a Babel of
strange tongues, or in the shady courts and cool corridors that used to
be so much approved and patronized by former dwellers in Whitecross
Street; with visions of angry creditors, and an unsympathetic
commissioner in perspective, are apt to be forgotten when the man is
free again—free to push his way forward—to trade, and struggle, and
strive, and get into trouble again, if he list.
A bill was nothing to Mr. Black. He had done in bills all his life.
Trading, as was his fashion, always in advance of his fortune, it will
readily be believed that “paper” was to him the very soul of
business—that soul, in fact, which animated what would otherwise have
been a very dead, stupid, helpless sort of body.
Mr. Black’s diary of bills to meet was a literary curiosity well worth
inspecting, if it were borne at the same time in mind that the promoter
had not sixpenny-worth of real tangible property in the world.
But he had that which often stands a man in much better stead than
property: he had faith; and it is not in religious matters only that
faith is able to remove mountains.
He believed utterly in himself and in his own financial abilities; by
means of this belief, he was enabled not merely to remove mountains, but
also to create them out of molehills; wonderful companies—endless
Limited Liabilities—great works were developed from the merest,
paltriest, smallest businesses that any one could mention.
And because of his faith he was, conversationally, rather a pleasant man
with whom to be connected in business. Let who else would, sing a poor
song, he “never said die;” let who might be cross and changeable,
faint-hearted and desponding, Mr. Black was always the same.
Always self-reliant, cheery, hopeful, certain of success, that sort of
man who never meets an acquaintance with a long face; who is not
affected by the weather, who shakes hands just as heartily if the rain
be pouring down Heavens hard, as he would if it were the finest day in
summer; who considers snow a joke, and frost an agreeable change; who is
never down on his luck; whose barometer, according to his own showing,
is always rising; with whom it is, at least, fair weather from January
till December; who, if he do chance to get a heavy blow, is only
staggered by it for the moment; who is not eternally complaining about
his own health, or his wife’s health, or the sickness of his ten
children, or the bad state of trade, or the difficulties of fighting
through, but who always says, with a cheery nod—
“Quite well, thank you. Business? oh, capital; never had such a
month—more work to do than I can get through. Wish I could cut myself up
to be in a dozen places at once. All well with you? that’s right;
good-day, good-day!”
To a man like this, it may readily be imagined, Arthur Dudley proved a
perfect mine of wealth—a true God-send, as he reverently remarked to Mr.
Bailey Crossenham.
When first he and Arthur started together in the new Company, Mr. Black
informed the Brothers Crossenham that “he drew it mild with the Squire;”
but soon, finding that gentleman believed every word he told him, the
promoter grew less delicate, and would persuade his kinsman to accept
three or four bills for him in the course of a week.
It was such a rare experience for Mr. Black to hold thoroughly good
paper—paper concerning which no objection could be made, that he felt it
would be quite a slighting of Providence not to enjoy that strange
sensation thoroughly.
To allow a name like Dudley’s to waste its sweetness among the
Hertfordshire fields, and never figure on stamped slips of foolscap in
banks and discount offices, would have seemed to Mr. Black the merest
quixotism.
Here was what he had always sighed for—a good name. Like the individual
who would have given ten thousand pounds for a good character, because,
on the strength of that character, he could have trebled that sum
immediately, Mr. Black conceived that one good name must inevitably lead
to more. Should he suffer this gift to lie unused—should he allow this
talent to remain buried in a napkin? Never; a thousand times, never.
And, accordingly, he employed Arthur’s name as freely as he might his
own, which is saying a good deal; and Arthur rested satisfied.
Would not money turn in after Christmas. Were he and Mr. Black not to
go shares? Would those thousands not be returning to him from the sale
of the Lincoln’s Inn property? Was the Company not well thought
of—well talked about? Had not Walter Hope—spite of his aunt’s
remonstrances—added his name to the Direction, without a moment’s
hesitation? Had he not said to Mrs. Walter Hope,—
“And the dividends shall be yours, my love?” an arrangement which met
with that lady’s entire approval. Had Mr. Douglas Croft not remarked
that Black was “a sly fox, but a devilish clever fellow—a fellow who
could float anything, if he only took it into his head to do so?” Had he
not tasted of the sweets of spending money freely—of spending without
pausing first to consider, “Can I afford this expense?”
His deeds now went in front, and his prudent thoughts lagged slowly
behind. After the long Lent of fasting and humiliation—of poverty and
strict abstinence from all extravagance—from all worldly pleasures—all
social amusements—there suddenly dawned an Easter morning on his life,
full of brightness and pleasure—a morning when the old traditions were
forgotten, and a new era was begun.
Mr. Stewart’s visit was the first occurrence which cast an actual shadow
over all this radiancy. Previously, light clouds might have swept across
the sky—a few misgivings through his heart—so far, he had neither seen
nor heard anything of the money, some portion of which he knew, for
certain, Mr. Black must have received. Neither had letters from that
gentleman arrived with quite their accustomed punctuality at Berrie
Down. “Christmastime,” the promoter stated, threw everything, for a
short period, out of gear, and then ensued silence, until on the morning
of Mr. Stewart’s visit came a communication ending with these ominous
words,—
“I am right for the bill due on Saturday, but should like to see you
about the others.”
About the others! Good Heavens, what concern were they of Squire
Dudley’s? Mr. Black, or the bank, or the Company, or somebody, was to
take them up; certainly not Arthur.
The herds and flocks, the crops and Nellie, had represented to Squire
Dudley tangible property advanced into the “Protector Bread and Flour
Company, Limited,” but his name seemed the very vaguest valuable
possible, and he had stared at first, when Mr. Black suggested using it.
Now, however, the very vagueness of the threatened peril filled his mind
with alarm. What could Mr. Black want with him? and what did he mean by
being “right for that on Saturday?” Was he not right for all? and if he
were not, how did he expect the sight of Squire Dudley to put him so?
There was a terrible uncertainty about the matter which seemed very
frightful to Arthur; and then, on the top of this letter—following it
almost as swiftly as the thunderclap does lightning—came Mr. Stewart,
and the interview already detailed.
Altogether, the second day in the new year was not one marked with a
white stone in Squire Dudley’s memory, yet it brought, in due time, its
consolation, for pondering over the matter, Arthur discovered two
tangible pieces of comfort on which to hang his hopes: one, the offer of
the secretaryship; the other, Mr. Stewart’s own evident belief in the
ultimate success of the Company.
“So I will run up to town to-morrow and see Black,” decided Squire
Dudley—who had vainly striven to catch a glimpse of that gentleman on
Boxing Day, when he went to inform Mr. Ormson of his daughter’s
misdemeanor—“and I will tell him frankly about the secretaryship, so
that there may be no underhand dealing in the matter, and I can see how
the place in Lincoln’s Inn would suit for a residence, and then give Mr.
Stewart a decided answer.”
Already his opera-box and horses and carriages, his grand town
residence, his hunters, his hacks, his fashionable friends, were
dwindling down to a thousand a year and a free house—to work which,
slight though it might be, was more than he had ever thought of
previously attempting. Already the dream-castle was beginning to fade
away, and the sober stone-and-mortar building of reality taking its
place; but Arthur Dudley resolutely refused to see the inevitable change
which had commenced being wrought.
Bitten by the mania prevalent amongst those men with whom he had
latterly freely associated, the Squire would not regard the
secretaryship as anything except a useful step onward—a mere trifle
which would keep him in funds till the Company began to pay dividends,
and shares rose to some enormous premium.
When a person is making an imaginative fortune, there can be no possible
reason why he should not do the thing thoroughly.
Mentally, it is as easy to nett fifty thousand pounds as one—to send
shares up to fabulous prices as to keep them at par; in fact, if a man
once lets his fancy get the reins, he may mount to whatever height
pleases him and his charioteer best.
The only drawback to which proceeding is, that if he get a fall, he
stands a chance of being badly injured by it. Even Fancy seldom travels
with a free ticket—there are expenses incident on a too great intimacy
with that fair lady. She is apt to lead people a good deal astray
sometimes, with her glancing smiles and her bright bewitching eyes—with
her sweet tones, which fall so pleasantly on the ear—with her seductive
words, which ring such pleasant changes on the usually prosaic bells of
life.
But Arthur Dudley was not a man to turn back into the cold realms of
reality when once he had basked in the sunshine of prospective success.
Children think that they can keep back the rain-cloud by turning their
eyes away from that corner of the heavens whence the wind is blowing;
and, in like manner, Squire Dudley persisted in looking at the spot of
blue which revealed itself in his sky, and resolutely ignoring all the
blackness which was sweeping up behind.
“The ‘Protector’ should pay”—even Mr. Stewart had said something to that
effect; and the very first thing which met Arthur’s delighted gaze, as
he walked down Gray’s Inn Lane from the King’s Cross Station, was a huge
vehicle—apparently constructed on the joint models of a police-van and a
cattle-truck, driven by a man in a quiet livery of orange and green, and
guarded by a hanging footman, decked out in the like complimentary
colours—which vehicle bore on its sides this inscription:—
“VIS UNITA FORTIOR,”
the motto of the Company, its device being a bundle of sticks firmly
tied together.
Then followed—
“PROTECTOR”
FLOUR AND BREAD COMPANY (LIMITED).
INCORPORATED UNDER ACT OF PARLIAMENT,
For the purpose of Supplying the Public with the Best Bread at the
Lowest Possible Price.
* * * * *
If this did not look like business, Arthur wondered what would. If all
that varnish and gilding, all that lettering and painting, did not
indicate success, he was very much out in his calculations. It was only
the third day for the vans to be out, and they had not yet lost their
pristine brilliancy. They were clean and fresh, as though they had that
moment come out of the builder’s hands—the liveries were free from spot
or stain—the brass of the harness was bright as lacquer—the horses were
groomed to perfection—the drivers and the men behind both looked, in
their fine conspicuous clothing, conscious and conceited, and, perhaps,
a little shamefaced besides.
The London boys cheered the splendid conveyance, and put, at the same
time, various rude questions to the individuals in charge.
The idle, dirty, half-starved looking women who are always gathered
round the entrance to those wretched courts leading out of Gray’s Inn
Lane, stared after the vehicle, and made audible comments upon it, which
Arthur could hear as he passed by.
Very well-dressed people also took notice of the van, and wondered what
the meaning of the motto might be. Ladies were especially interested in
this question; and Arthur longed to stop and tell a few of the sweet
creatures—not merely the English of _Vis Unita Fortior_, but also that
he was one of the directors in the great Company.
Walking down Gray’s Inn Lane, the Squire certainly was a proof of the
truth of his own quotation. As a master baker, singly, he would have
felt very much ashamed of his trade, and vexed by any public recognition
of it. As a master baker, associated with other gentlemen and noblemen
also bakers, Squire Dudley conceived himself a person of importance, one
of a body of philanthropists, who, “hearing the cry of the people for
bread, pure bread, sweet, wholesome, nutritious bread, at a moderate
price, had determined on forming themselves into a Company which, under
the name of the ‘Protector,’ should guard alike the rights of producer
and consumer—supply the public with the best bread at the lowest
remunerative prices—ensure to the shareholders a fair and certain return
for capital—do away with unwholesome, ill-ventilated, badly-constructed,
insufficient and uncleanly bakehouses, and render the trade wholesome
and remunerative to the employés connected with it, instead of
permitting it to remain, as hitherto, a blot on nineteenth century
civilization—one of the most enervating, pestiferous, dangerous trades
which could be conceived.”—_Vide_ Prospectus.
This is one of the many beauties of a Limited Liability Company: a man
can have all the excitement, profit, and pleasure of trade, without any
of its unpleasantness.
If he be one of the directors on the board of, say “The Private Dwelling
Chimney-Sweeping Association,” he still remains a gentleman.
In the Bankruptcy Court, indeed, where some singular anomalies are still
permitted to exist, he might be styled a dealer and chapman; but in West
End drawing-rooms his standing is above suspicion. He is a wise
individual who, despising trade, is still not above making use of it;
who, knowing nothing of business, would nevertheless go and reap of the
corn which his hand neither planted nor watered; he can do, as Squire
Dudley wished to do, “gather where he has not strawed,” and march in and
out of City offices as though the whole of the Lord Mayor’s kingdom from
Ludgate to the Tower, and from Moorgate to London Bridge, belonged to
him.
It was with this feeling Arthur Dudley, spite of his anxieties, entered
the temporary offices in Dowgate Hill, where he was greeted by Mr. Black
with an uproarious joviality.
“Well, old fellow, and how are you? Bills brought you up express, I see;
thought nothing short of them could get me a speedy sight of you. I did
not want you about them at all, you know, really, for I could have sent
you the renewals to sign by post as easily as not. Yes, we must renew. I
have such a devil of a lot of things on hand at the present time—good
things, but still all crying out for money. Well, and how are you? and
your charming lady, and my friend Lally, you know? Poor little cricket!
I was deucedly sorry to hear of her being so ill; and oh! isn’t that a
business about Ormson’s daughter! By Jove! the old man is cut up, and no
mistake. Mrs. O. takes it better than he—comes the Roman matron and that
sort of thing; think I liked her quite as well before I heard her
declaiming against the girl. Mrs. Black believes her sister forced
Bessie to accept Harcourt against her will, and led her a nice life at
home over it. I always considered Mrs. O. a very superior sort of woman;
but I suppose God who made it is the only one who rightly understands
female nature. It is an enigma to me. Who’s she off with, Squire? Come,
it is all in the family, and you need not keep the matter dark here.”
“I have not the remotest idea,” answered Arthur. “No one seems able to
give the slightest clue. She must have been a sly, deep girl to make a
flight like that. She bribed one of the servants, went down the back
staircase, out across the farm-yard, away along the field avenue, and so
into Berrie Down Lane, where her lover, it appears, was waiting for
her.”
“She was a very pretty girl, Dudley,” said Mr. Black, meditatively,
speaking of her beauty already in the past tense.
“I never saw anything so particularly wonderful about her,” answered
Arthur, coolly.
“Well, she might not be your style, you know; but still she was
undeniably pretty. Talking about style, by-the-bye, I saw your old
flame, Mrs. Croft, yesterday. I suppose you are not touchy about a
fellow speaking his mind concerning her? You had a miss there—such as a
man might have of losing his life. I’d as lief be married to the devil.
Croft asked me up to dinner, and I don’t think that madame liked it; at
any rate, she made herself so confoundedly disagreeable that Croft
seemed downright ashamed of her. And didn’t she nag him! that is enough.
He broke a vase on the drawing-room chimney-piece after dinner, and I
never heard a poor beast so pitched into in all my life. And before the
servants, too! If she had said the one-half to me she said to him, I
should not have minded doing six months for what I would have given her.
A man was telling me a good thing about Croft the other day. It appears
he had been complaining to some of his wife’s male relations about the
way she goes on, and this fellow, some fool of a swell, did not seem
able to make out what exact fault Croft laid to her charge. ‘Isn’t she
pwoper?’ he drawled out. ‘Proper!’ says Croft, in that sharp off-hand
way of his, ‘damnably proper.’ Ah, we may laugh at it,” went on Mr.
Black, doubtless speaking figuratively, for he was not laughing, and not
a ghost of a smile could have been detected on Arthur’s face; “but it
must be the very deuce to be tied to a woman like that. While she was
going on at him, blowing him up sky-high, and sweeping about in her
grand dress, with a crinoline big enough to have camped out under, I
thought of your wife, Squire, and I said to a man this very morning, not
half-an-hour ago,—
“Well, Dudley must be a deuced lucky fellow—not merely to have missed
that woman, but to have got the wife he has. There is no sham there—no
angel one day, and devil the next.”
Arthur cleared his throat. He felt as though he were choking; he wanted
to make some withering speech in answer to this officious fool, but he
was not quick of wit nor ready with repartee.
First, to lose a woman, to be jilted, to have an heiress slip out of his
fingers, to be supplanted by a wealthier suitor, to be flung back from
the height of prospective affluence to the dead level of certain
poverty, and then to be congratulated on the subject, and called a lucky
fellow! To hear another man who had gained the prize pitied for his,
success, and he, Arthur, felicitated on having chosen a wife who did not
suit him in the least. Arthur knew Heather did not suit him—that she was
not the woman he ought to have married. At that moment he felt very
ungrateful both towards Heaven and the helpmeet Heaven had sent him, and
he felt further that he hated Mr. Black with a perfect hatred, for which
reason, as he could not think of any specially clever or cutting remark
that might advantageously be uttered, he turned the conversation into a
channel which he thought must prove disagreeable to Mr. Black, and
said,—
“Speaking of Croft, Stewart called on me yesterday.”
“Ah, yes,” answered the promoter, briskly; “been down staying with his
cousin, the Honourable Augusta, I hear. That would be a nice suitable
match, now; thought it likely he might call. He told you he meant to
oppose the purchase of your Lincoln’s Inn speculation, I suppose?”
“Your Lincoln’s Inn speculation, rather,” retorted Arthur, a little
indignantly.
“_Our_ Lincoln’s Inn speculation, then, to meet the views of both
parties,” proposed Mr. Black. “So he called to tell you about that, did
he? People’s ideas of civility differ. I would just as soon call on a
man to pick his pocket as to inform him I meant to overthrow his plans.”
“That was not Mr. Stewart’s sole object in calling,” remarked Arthur.
“Oh! indeed; and what might his object be, if I am not too inquisitive?”
“Not at all; I came up partly on purpose to tell you. Guess the nature
of the proposal he made.”
“That you should wind up the Company, or try to do so; that he and you
and Mr. Raidsford and Lord Kemms should start an opposition bakery of
your own; that you should purchase Mr. Scrotter’s flour-mill, and sell
it to the Company; that you and Mr. Stewart should agree to support each
other through everything. There, I have guessed often enough. What is
this wonderful proposal which he made to you yesterday?”
“Guess again. I would rather that you jumped at it yourself.”
“Hang it! I can’t guess what the old humbug wanted with you. Did he
propose marrying one of your sisters?—or——I have it!” exclaimed Mr.
Black; “he offered you the secretaryship?”
“He did.”
“And you accepted it?”
“No, I did not: I felt a delicacy——”
“Felt nonsense!” interrupted Mr. Black; “how could you be such a
simpleton? You must be rich to throw away a thousand a year for
delicacy! Deuce a thing to do except sit before the fire for a certain
number of hours reading the _Times_—have clerks under you to do
everything—read the _Times_ for you, if you like! And a secretaryship to
which you are appointed through the interest of Allan Stewart! By Jove!
it is as good as an annuity. You felt a delicacy about interfering with
Mr. Crossenham—that’s the hitch, is it? Very nice, and proper, and
gentlemanly indeed—very; but Crossenham, you see, is not going to retain
the secretaryship—no, not if we went down on our knees and prayed him to
keep it, which I, for one, have no intention of doing.”
“Why will he not keep it?” asked Arthur, in amazement.
“Because it don’t suit him,” was the reply. “He has always been used to
work, and he don’t like idling. He says he has no fancy for loafing
about, with his hands in his pockets, drawing only a poor two hundred
and fifty a quarter, when there are thousands of pounds to be picked up
by any one willing to look out for chances. Of course, he is quite
another style of fellow from what you are, Dudley. He has been in
business all his life; and what really is a very good appointment for
you, seems almost like shelving him. I thought, as his health was not
very good, he might be glad of such a berth. But no; he is hungering and
thirsting after work—work, and no gammon—that is what he calls it.
Besides, he hates talking to those swells who are quite in your way, you
know. If Crossenham be your only objection, here is pen, ink, and
paper—write at once to Mr. Stewart, and say you accept his offer.”
“But if I do that, I bind myself not to ask the Company to purchase my
Lincoln’s Inn property.”
“And much good it would do if you did ask the Company to purchase it,
with Allan Stewart against you! Look here, Dudley. Stewart is going to
be the god of our board; so your best plan, if you want things to go
pretty square, is, thankfully to receive all he likes to offer you. My
power is gone, you know. Whenever he came crowing it over me, with his
shares, and his influence, and his wealth, and his connection, I gave in
at once; so take a friend’s advice, and accept. Did he promise to rent
the house from you? That is right. He proposed you should live there!
The very best thing possible. Good airy rooms, central situation, near
the theatres, accessible to everywhere!”
“And about those bills, Mr. Black?”
“Yes, about those bills! We must renew for a few months, till my
ventures begin to make me some return. A mere matter of form! I will pay
the interest, of course, and you shall have back the old bills. Here,
Collins,” cried Mr. Black, opening the door between the two offices,
“run over the way and get me a pound’s worth of bill-stamps. Three
shilling and two shilling—four of each. Look sharp now, and don’t be the
whole day about it. While we are ‘melting,’ you might as well have a few
hundreds, might you not, Dudley? You will want some money to carry you
over till quarter-day, and there will be the expenses connected with
moving, and so forth. How much?—say three! You know we can always get
more, if you run short.”
“But supposing that you are unable to meet those bills?” ventured
Arthur.
“Why, then, we must renew again,” answered Mr. Black, cheerily, “and
renew, and renew, and renew till one or other of us comes into his
fortune. We cannot be kept out of it for ever,” added Mr. Black,
jocularly. There was no having this man; once afloat with him, no one
need ever after expect to touch solid land—once launched in the same
boat, and you had to obey Captain Black, who would have laughed while
sending one of the crew to his death, and kept “up the steam” had his
nearest friend been dying.
Spite of his good spirits, however, Arthur ventured to interrogate him
concerning the marketable value of paid-up shares, as to which the
promoter’s opinion was almost identical with that of Mr. Stewart.
“But they are available as security,” proceeded Mr. Black. “For
instance, if you were pushed for money, you could get an advance upon
them. They are much the same as Berrie Down, you understand, tangible
property—something to show, if a creditor turns crusty, or discount
rises too high. We shall, all of us, do very well yet; and I am glad you
are coming to town. You will never care to go back to Hertfordshire
afterwards, even when you are worth ten thousand a year. Here are the
stamps; that is right. Now, Dudley, I must trouble you for a moment. Let
us first see the amounts, however, of those we must renew;” and Mr.
Black, pulling out his pocket-book, consulted various memoranda which it
contained, all having reference to certain of the bills coming due as
fast as the autumn peaches ripen.
“I may as well give you a cheque for three hundred,” said Mr. Black; “no
need to be sending it down after you;” and Peter Black forthwith drew a
cheque for three hundred pounds in favour of Arthur Dudley, Esquire, on
order, which document he crossed, “Hertford and South Kemms’ Banking
Company.”
Mr. Stewart would have known that he did this in order to give himself
time to get some of Arthur’s acceptances discounted before the cheque
came back to his bankers; but Squire Dudley, being less acquainted with
business manœuvres than the great director, thought it was all in the
ordinary course of affairs.
It did not occur to him either as singular that many of the bills he
accepted should bear no drawer’s signature attached—an omission Mr.
Stewart would at once have detected and challenged.
Truth was, Mr. Black and the two Crossenhams played into each other’s
hands, thus: the Crossenhams would get a bill discounted at their
bankers, the produce of which Black would then pay into his own bank.
Then he would get a bill discounted, with Crossenhams’ name to it as
drawer, and hand that amount over to Crossenhams. Thus, the bills went
dancing about like shuttlecocks—they were paid away, they were
discounted, they were given as security, and nobody but Mr. Black knew
for what exact sum Arthur had made himself liable.
“Enough to puzzle Berrie Down,” said Mr. Black to himself, thoughtfully,
as, after Arthur’s departure, he totted up the amounts attached to the
memoranda of which mention has previously been made; “enough to puzzle
Berrie Down, if the ‘Protector’ come to grief; but it shall not do that,
not, at any rate, until I have had my penn’orths out of it.”
Having arrived at which prudent and honest conclusion, Mr. Black closed
his pocket-book, circling it for extra security with an india-rubber
band. That pocket-book, which never left Mr. Black’s person except when
he was asleep (and then he locked it up in a small safe in his
dressing-room), contained all the present secrets of the promoter’s
life.
Had Mr. Stewart only obtained a sight of the pages that band kept so
tightly together, he might reasonably have considered the ultimate
success of the “Protector Bread and Flour Company, Limited,”
problematical.