Mr. Edward Bultiwell, of the House of Bultiwell and Sons, sat alone in
his private office, one morning a week or so later, and communed with
ghosts. It was a large apartment, furnished in mid-Victorian fashion,
and, with the exception of the telephone and electric light, destitute
of any of the modern aids to commercial enterprise. Oil paintings of
Mr. Bultiwell's father and grandfather hung upon the walls. A row of
stiff, horsehair chairs with massive frames stood around the room,
one side of which was glass-fronted, giving a view of the extensive
warehouse beyond. It was here that Mr. Bultiwell's ghosts were
gathered together,--ghosts of buyers from every town in the United
Kingdom, casting occasional longing glances towards where the
enthroned magnate sat, hoping that he might presently issue forth and
vouchsafe them a word or two of greeting; ghosts of sellers, too,
sellers of hides and skins from India and South America, Mexico and
China, all anxious to do business with the world-famed House of
Bultiwell. Every now and then the great man would condescend to
exchange amenities with one of these emissaries from distant parts.
Everywhere was stir and bustle. Every few minutes a salesman would
present himself, with a record of his achievements. All the time the
hum of voices, the clattering of chains, the dust and turmoil of
moving merchandise, the coming and going of human beings, all helping
to drive the wheel of prosperity for the House of Bultiwell!...
The ghosts faded away. Two old men were outside, dusting stacks of
leather. There was no one else, no sound of movement or life.
Bultiwell glanced at his watch, as he sat there and waited. Presently
he struck the bell in front of him, and a grey-haired bookkeeper
shuffled in.
"What time did Pedlar say Mr. Pratt would be round?" he asked harshly.
"Between eleven and twelve, sir."
Mr. Bultiwell glanced at his watch and grunted.
"Where's Mr. Haskall?"
"Gone round to the sale, sir."
"He got my message?" Mr. Bultiwell asked anxiously.
"I told him that he was on no account to buy, sir," the cashier
assented. "He was somewhat disappointed. There is a probability of a
rise in hides, and most of the pits down at the tannery are empty."
Mr. Bultiwell groaned under his breath. His eyes met the eyes of his
old employe.
"You know why we can't buy--at the sales, Jenkins," he muttered.
The man sighed as he turned away.
"I know, sir."
Then there was a little stir in the place. The two men left off
dusting; the clerks in the counting-house raised their heads
hopefully. Jacob Pratt arrived and was ushered into the presence of
the head of the firm. It was a trying moment for Mr. Bultiwell, but
he did his best. He wished to be patronising, kindly and gracious.
He succeeded in being cringing.
"Glad to see you, Pratt. Glad to see you," he said. "Try that
easy-chair. A cigar, eh? No? Quite right! Don't smoke much myself
till after lunch. Seen Pedlar this morning?"
"I've just come from his office," Jacob replied.
Mr. Bultiwell thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and leaned
back in his chair.
"Clever fellow, Pedlar, but not so clever as he thinks himself. I
don't mind telling you, Pratt, between ourselves, that it was entirely
my idea that you should be approached with a view to your coming in
here."
"Is that so?" Jacob observed quietly.
"I knew perfectly well that you wouldn't be content to do nothing, a
young man like you, and if you're going to keep in the leather trade
at all, why not become associated with a firm you know all about, eh?
I don't want to flatter myself," Mr. Bultiwell proceeded, with a touch
of his old arrogance, "but Bultiwell's, although we haven't been so
energetic lately, is still pretty well at the top of the tree, eh?"
"Not quite where it was, I am afraid, Mr. Bultiwell," Jacob objected.
"I've been looking through the figures, you know. Profits seem to have
been going down a good deal."
"Pooh! That's nothing! Hides were ridiculously high all last year, but
they're on the drop now. Besides, these accountants always have to
make out balance sheets from a pessimistic point of view."
"The present capital of the firm," Jacob commented, "seems to me
astonishingly small."
"What's it figure out at?" Mr. Bultiwell enquired, with a fine show of
carelessness. "Forty thousand pounds? Well, that is small--smaller
than it's been at any time during the last ten years. Perhaps I have
embarked in a few too many outside investments. They are all good
'uns, though. No use having money lying idle, Mr. Pratt, these days.
Now my idea was," he went on, striving to hide a slight quaver in his
voice, "that you put in, say, eighty thousand pounds, and take an
equal partnership--a partnership, Pratt, remember, in Bultiwell's....
Eh? What's that?"
Mr. Bultiwell looked up with a well-assumed frown of annoyance. A very
fashionably dressed young lady, attractive notwithstanding a certain
sullenness of expression, had entered the room carrying a great bunch
of roses.
"So sorry, dad," she said, strolling up to the table. "I understood
that you were alone. Here are the roses," she added, laying them upon
the table without enthusiasm. "Are you coming up west for luncheon
to-day?"
"My dear," Mr. Bultiwell replied, "I am engaged just now. By the bye,
you know Mr. Pratt, don't you? Pratt, you remember my daughter?"
Jacob, whose memories of that young lady, with her masses of yellow
hair and most alluring smile, had kept him in fairyland for three
months, and a little lower than hell for the last two years, took
fierce command of himself as he rose to his feet and received a very
cordial but somewhat forced greeting from this unexpected visitor.
"Of course I know Mr. Pratt," she answered, "and I hope he hasn't
altogether forgotten me. The last time I saw you, you bicycled over
one evening, didn't you, to see my father's roses, and we made you
play tennis. I remember how cross dad was because you played without
shoes."
"Mr. Pratt is doubtless better provided in these days," Bultiwell
observed with an elephantine smile. "What about running over to see us
to-night or to-morrow night in that new car of yours, Pratt, eh?"
"Do come," the young lady begged, with a very colourable imitation of
enthusiasm. "I am longing for some tennis."
"You are very kind," Jacob replied. "May I leave it open just for a
short time?"
"Certainly, certainly!" Mr. Bultiwell agreed. "Sybil, run along and
sit in the waiting-room for a few minutes. I'll take you up to the
Carlton, if I can spare the time. May take Mr. Pratt, perhaps."
Sybil passed out, flashing a very brilliant if not wholly natural
smile into Jacob's face, as he held open the door. Mr. Bultiwell
watched the latter anxiously as he returned slowly to his place. He
was not altogether satisfied with the result of his subtle little
plot.
"Where were we?" he continued, struggling hard to persevere in that
cheerfulness which sat upon him in these days like an ill-fitting
garment. "Ah! I know--eighty thousand pounds and an equal partnership.
How does that appeal to you, Mr. Pratt?"
"There were one or two points in the balance sheet which struck me,"
Jacob confessed, gazing down at his well-creased trousers. "The margin
between assets and liabilities, though small, might be considered
sufficient, but the liability on bills under discount seemed to me
extraordinarily large."
Mr. Bultiwell's pencil, which had been straying idly over the blotting
pad by his side, stopped. He looked at his visitor with a frown.
"Credits must always be large in our trade," he said sharply. "You
know that, Mr. Pratt."
"Your credits, however," Jacob pointed out, "are abnormal. I ventured
to take out a list of six names, on each one of whom you have
acceptances running to the tune of twenty or thirty thousand pounds."
"The majority of my customers," Mr. Bultiwell declared, with a little
catch in his breath, "are as safe as the Bank of England."
Jacob produced a very elegant morocco pocketbook, with gold edges, and
studied a slip of paper which he held towards his companion.
"Here is a list of the firms," he continued. "I have interviewed most
of them and made it worth their while to tell me the truth. There
isn't one of them that isn't hopelessly insolvent. They are being kept
on their legs by you and your bankers, simply and solely to bolster up
the credit of the House of Bultiwell."
"Sir!" Mr. Bultiwell thundered.
"I should drop that tone, if I were you," Jacob advised coldly. "You
have been a bully all your life, and a cruel one at that. Lately you
have become dishonest. When the firm of Bultiwell is compelled to file
its petition in bankruptcy, which I imagine will be a matter of only
a few weeks, I do not envy you your examination before the official
receiver."
Mr. Bultiwell collapsed like a pricked bladder. He shrivelled in his
clothes. There was a whine in his tone as he substituted appeal for
argument.
"There's good business to be done here still," he pleaded. "Even if
the firm lost a little money on those names, there are two of them at
least who might weather the storm, with reasonable assistance. Pratt,
they tell me you're pretty well a millionaire. I'm sorry if I was hard
on you in the old days. If you won't take a partnership, will you buy
the business?"
Jacob laughed scornfully.
"If I were ten times a millionaire," he said, rising to his feet, "I
would never risk a penny of my money to rid you of the millstone you
have hung around your neck. It is going to be part of my activity in
life, Mr. Bultiwell, to assist nature in dispensing justice. For many
years you have ruled the trade in which we were both brought up, and
during the whole of that time you have never accomplished a single
gracious or kindly action. You have wound up by trying to drag me
into a business which is rotten to the core. Your accountants may be
technically justified in reckoning that hundred and forty thousand
pounds owed you by those six men as good, because they never failed,
but you yourself know that they are hopelessly insolvent, and that
the moment you stop renewing their bills they will topple down like
ninepins.... I would not help you if you were starving. I shall read
of your bankruptcy with pleasure. There is, I think, nothing more to
be said."
Mr. Bultiwell sat in his chair, dazed, for long after Jacob had left
him. His daughter reappeared and left at once, harshly dismissed. His
clerks went out for lunch and returned at the appointed hour. Mr.
Bultiwell was seeing ghosts....
* * * * *
Jacob and his friend dined together that night in a well-known
grill-room. Dauncey, to whom, in those days, every man seemed to be
a brother and every place he entered a fairy palace, showed signs
of distress as he listened to his companion's story.
"Dear friend," he remonstrated, "of what use in the world is revenge?
I do not suggest that you should throw your money away trying to help
Bultiwell, but you might at least have left him alone."
Jacob shook his head. The corners of his mouth tightened. He spoke
with grave seriousness.
"Dick," he said, "you are like the man who sympathises with the evil
growth which it is the surgeon's task to remove. In the days of his
prosperity, Bultiwell was a brute and a bully. His only moments of
comparative geniality came when he was steeped in wine and glutted
with food. His own laziness and self-indulgence paved the way to his
ruin. He then became dishonest. He deliberately tried to cheat me; he
stooped even to the paltry trick of remembering that I once admired
his daughter, and dragged her in to complete his humiliation. Believe
me, the world is a better place without its Bultiwells--a better and a
healthier place--and where I find them in life, I am going to use the
knife."
"You have used it this time perhaps even more effectually than you
thought," Dauncey groaned, as he took an evening paper from his pocket
and passed it across the table. "Mr. Bultiwell shot himself in his
office, late this afternoon. I did not tell you before, for fear it
might spoil your dinner."
Jacob sipped his wine, unmoved.
"It was really the only thing left for him," was his brief comment.
Dauncey was once more the melancholy man.
"I hope that all your interventions, or whatever you may call them,"
he said, "won't end in the same way."
Jacob's eyes looked through the walls of the restaurant. A sudden
impulse of fancy had carried him forward into that land of adventure
to which he held the golden key. He felt the thrill of danger, the
mystery of unknown places. He passed from palace to hovel. He heard
the curse of the defeated schemer, he felt the warmth and joy of
gratitude. All these figures, save one, were imaginary, and that one
was always there, always watching, always with that look of reproach
which he seemed already to see in her cold blue eyes. He fancied
himself pleading with her, only to be scorned; hiding from the dangers
she invoked; fancied her the protectress of his enemies, the evil
genius of those whom he would have befriended. And all the time there
lingered in the background of his mind the memory of that single
evening when, angered by her father's condescension, she had chosen
to be kind to him; had shown him the secret places in that wonderful
garden, glorious with budding rhododendrons, fragrant with the roses
drooping from the long pergola,--a little scene out of fairyland,
through which he had walked under the rising moon like a man
bewildered with strange happiness.
Richard leaned forward in his place.
"Are you seeing ghosts?" he asked curiously.
Jacob was suddenly back from that unreal world into which his magical
prosperity had pitchforked him. He drained the glass which he raised
to his lips with firm fingers.
"Ghosts belong to the past," he answered. "All that we have any
concern with is the future."