The Money Market.
Let us be serious.--Business!
The new scene plunges us head foremost into the affairs of the Levant
trading-house of Pizzituti, Turlington & Branca. What on earth do we
know about the Levant Trade? Courage! If we have ever known what it is
to want money we are perfectly familiar with the subject at starting.
The Levant Trade does occasionally get into difficulties.--Turlington
wanted money.
The letter which had been handed to him on board the yacht was from his
third partner, Mr. Branca, and was thus expressed:
"A crisis in the trade. All right, so far--except our business with
the small foreign firms. Bills to meet from those quarters, (say) forty
thousand pounds--and, I fear, no remittances to cover them. Particulars
stated in another letter addressed to you at Post-office, Ilfracombe. I
am quite broken down with anxiety, and confined to my bed. Pizzituti is
still detained at Smyrna. Come back at once."
The same evening Turlington was at his office in Austin Friars,
investigating the state of affairs, with his head clerk to help him.
Stated briefly, the business of the firm was of the widely miscellaneous
sort. They plied a brisk trade in a vast variety of commodities. Nothing
came amiss to them, from Manchester cotton manufactures to Smyrna figs.
They had branch houses at Alexandria and Odessa, and correspondents
here, there, and everywhere, along the shores of the Mediterranean, and
in the ports of the East. These correspondents were the persons alluded
to in Mr. Branca's letter as "small foreign firms;" and they had
produced the serious financial crisis in the affairs of the great house
in Austin Friars, which had hurried Turlington up to London.
Every one of these minor firms claimed and received the privilege of
drawing bills on Pizzituti, Turlington & Branca for amounts varying
from four to six thousand pounds--on no better security than a verbal
understanding that the money to pay the bills should be forwarded before
they fell due. Competition, it is needless to say, was at the bottom of
this insanely reckless system of trading. The native firms laid it down
as a rule that they would decline to transact business with any house
in the trade which refused to grant them their privilege. In the ease of
Turlington's house, the foreign merchants had drawn their bills on him
for sums large in the aggregate, if not large in themselves; had long
since turned those bills into cash in their own markets, for their own
necessities; and had now left the money which their paper represented
to be paid by their London correspondents as it fell due. In some
instances, they had sent nothing but promises and excuses. In others,
they had forwarded drafts on firms which had failed already, or which
were about to fail, in the crisis. After first exhausting his
resources in ready money, Mr. Branca had provided for the more pressing
necessities by pledging the credit of the house, so far as he _could_
pledge it without exciting suspicion of the truth. This done, there were
actually left, between that time and Christmas, liabilities to be met to
the extent of forty thousand pounds, without a farthing in hand to pay
that formidable debt.
After working through the night, this was the conclusion at which
Richard Turlington arrived, when the rising sun looked in at him through
the windows of his private room.
The whole force of the blow had fallen on _him_. The share of his
partners in the business was of the most trifling nature. The capital
was his, the risk was his. Personally and privately, _he_ had to find
the money, or to confront the one other alternative--ruin.
How was the money to be found?
With his position in the City, he had only to go to the famous
money-lending and discounting house of Bulpit Brothers--reported to
"turn over" millions in their business every year--and to supply himself
at once with the necessary funds. Forty thousand pounds was a trifling
transaction to Bulpit Brothers.
Having got the money, how, in the present state of his trade, was the
loan to be paid back?
His thoughts reverted to his marriage with Natalie.
"Curious!" he said to himself, recalling his conversation with Sir
Joseph on board the yacht. "Graybrooke told me he would give his
daughter half his fortune on her marriage. Half Graybrooke's fortune
happens to be just forty thousand pounds!" He took a turn in the room.
No! It was impossible to apply to Sir Joseph. Once shake Sir Joseph's
conviction of his commercial solidity, and the marriage would be
certainly deferred--if not absolutely broken off. Sir Joseph's fortune
could be made available, in the present emergency, in but one way--he
might use it to repay his debt. He had only to make the date at which
the loan expired coincide with the date of his marriage, and there
was his father-in-law's money at his disposal, or at his wife's
disposal--which meant the same thing. "It's well I pressed Graybrooke
about the marriage when I did!" he thought. "I can borrow the money at a
short date. In three months from this Natalie will be my wife."
He drove to his club to get breakfast, with his mind cleared, for the
time being, of all its anxieties but one.
Knowing where he could procure the loan, he was by no means equally sure
of being able to find the security on which he could borrow the
money. Living up to his income; having no expectations from any living
creature; possessing in landed property only some thirty or forty
acres in Somersetshire, with a quaint little dwelling, half farm house,
half-cottage, attached--he was incapable of providing the needful
security from his own personal resources. To appeal to wealthy friends
in the City would be to let those friends into the secret of his
embarrassments, and to put his credit in peril. He finished his
breakfast, and went back to Austin Friars--failing entirely, so far, to
see how he was to remove the last obstacle now left in his way.
The doors were open to the public; business had begun. He had not been
ten minutes in his room before the shipping-clerk knocked at the door
and interrupted him, still absorbed in his own anxious thoughts.
"What is it?" he asked, irritably.
"Duplicate Bills of Lading, sir," answered the clerk, placing the
documents on his ma ster's table.
Found! There was the security on his writing-desk, staring him in the
face! He dismissed the clerk and examined the papers.
They contained an account of goods shipped to the London house on board
vessels sailing from Smyrna and Odessa, and they were signed by the
masters of the ships, who thereby acknowledged the receipt of the goods,
and undertook to deliver them safely to the persons owning them, as
directed. First copies of these papers had already been placed in the
possession of the London house. The duplicates had now followed, in
case of accident. Richard Turlington instantly determined to make the
duplicates serve as his security, keeping the first copies privately
under lock and key, to be used in obtaining possession of the goods
at the customary time. The fraud was a fraud in appearance only. The
security was a pure formality. His marriage would supply him with the
funds needed for repaying the money, and the profits of his business
would provide, in course of time, for restoring the dowry of his wife.
It was simply a question of preserving his credit by means which were
legitimately at his disposal. Within the lax limits of mercantile
morality, Richard Turlington had a conscience. He put on his hat and
took his false security to the money-lenders, without feeling at all
lowered in his own estimation as an honest man.
Bulpit Brothers, long desirous of having such a name as his on their
books, received him with open arms. The security (covering the amount
borrowed) was accepted as a matter of course. The money was lent, for
three months, with a stroke of the pen. Turlington stepped out again
into the street, and confronted the City of London in the character of
the noblest work of mercantile creation--a solvent man.*
The Fallen Angel, walking invisibly behind, in Richard's shadow, flapped
his crippled wings in triumph. From that moment the Fallen Angel had got
him.
* It may not be amiss to remind the incredulous reader that
a famous firm in the City accepted precisely the same
security as that here accepted by Bulpit Brothers, with the
same sublime indifference to troubling themselves by making
any inquiry about it.