The Third Hour

by Geoffrey Household

  “We have to fall back on the curse of God to explain it. Even I am tempted to think so—that at some time we offended in so appalling a way against the law of Nature that we’ve borne the inevitable consequences of it ever since. The desire for sacrifice is very strong in us. That’s one of the reasons why I hope so eagerly that Toby Manning has something for me.”

  “Whatever it is, he takes it seriously,” said Ottery. “He has resigned from Hanson & Crane.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I telephoned that funny fellow Whitehead. He said the firm had a cable giving them a month’s notice, and he himself got a private note this morning from which he judged that Toby had found something which interested him more than toys. Quiet chap, that Whitehead! Nice chap! He seemed quite worried about Toby and very glad to have someone enquiring after him. I told him that Toby always fell on his feet.”

  “I hope you’re right. We really know very little. He’s evidently under the influence of some character as strong as he is.”

  “Damn the man!” said Ottery affectionately. “Do you know any bullion brokers personally?”

  “Yes. Otto Montrose of Klein & Marcus. He’s no particular friend, but he knows I’m straight.”

  “Good! Toby’s idea of forming a company is impracticable. We haven’t time, and there are too many formalities. You and I had better make a partnership agreement and state our purpose as trading in gold and precious metals. That looks respectable.”

  “I wish we knew more,” said Bendrihem. “It would make it easier to answer questions.”

  “Never mind about questions! Bullion brokers don’t ask too many in these days. There’s a deal of smuggled gold and bank notes sold in London. That’s the only way a small businessman can get his profits out of the countries with controlled exchange—and since it’s a criminal offence in the country of origin, he only confides in God and his auditor.”

  “Well, you probably know,” Bendrihem laughed. “But what’s our story?”

  “Is he Scotch, Montrose?”

  “His grandfather was a Rosenberg of Budapest.”

  “Ingenious fellow!” declared Mark admiringly. “What sort of man is he?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean—what would he like to be told? Toby of course is our trusted head clerk—our Mr Manning. But whom has he been dealing with? German refugees? Russian princesses? Chief rabbis? Mexican generals? In fact, from whom have we bought and why?”

  “Of your list,” said Bendrihem, “I think he’d like the Russian princess best, but don’t overdo it.”

  “A snob! By God, I love a good snob!”

  “No, not quite a snob. But he likes to feel himself a depositary of secrets.” Bendrihem’s calm eyes twinkled. “He’d love to advance money on the Crown jewels or help Mr Baldwin to buy the Panama Canal.”

  “Splendid! Arrange an appointment with our pocket Rothschild!”

  “I have.”

  Bendrihem rang for Miss Mason. She entered briskly but gracefully. Her long stride and small feet were well adapted to the minor complexities of entering and crossing rooms. Ottery beamed at her, but was only answered by her coolly professional smile.

  “Did you get hold of Mr Montrose?” Bendrihem asked.

  “Yes. He said he was not free this afternoon as he had to open an exhibition of Lithuanian art at the Leicester Galleries.”

  “Ha! A ruddy Maecenas!” remarked Ottery.

  Miss Mason looked at him severely. She had been impressed by this talk of art galleries and was annoyed by the visitor’s irreverence.

  “He said,” she went on, “that he would be pleased to see you between eleven and twelve to-morrow.”

  “All right,” said Ottery, getting up. “Then I’ll ask our tame solicitors to draft a partnership agreement, and drop in with it this evening.”

  “I’ll come to your office if you like. I expect you’re busy.”

  “No,” said Mark firmly. “I’ll come here. There’ll be some typing to do. Can you stop late?” he asked Penelope.

  “I shall of course stop if Mr Bendrihem asks me to,” said Miss Mason primly.

  “Tiger skins!” declared Mark. “Roses upon tiger skins! How evil is the Ottery!”

  At half-past eleven the next morning Bendrihem and Ottery entered a golden and secluded backwater off Gracechurch Street, and went up to the offices of Klein & Marcus. They were kept waiting for a period long enough to indicate that Mr Montrose was a busy man with many calls upon his time, short enough to express a decent degree of deference to the visitors. It was precisely four and a half minutes. Otto Montrose judged the relative importance of callers with a nicety worthy of diplomatic protocol.

  He was a man in the early forties, very tall, with black curly hair, pronounced features and an imposing bearing. He cultivated an air of distinction, and, though self-consciously, achieved it; he had the richness and good taste of a single diamond on a bed of black velvet. His city uniform was a black lounge suit with delicate pin stripes of white, topped, when he wished to be at his most distinguished, by a black cravat of incredibly expensive silk. A monocle on a broad ribbon completed his dress. He used it only on objects, never on people. To see Mr Montrose examine a ten-shilling note through his eyeglass was to believe at once that the Bank of England had consulted him upon its number and design.

  He greeted Ottery pleasantly and Bendrihem with a shade of patronage. He congratulated the chartered accountant on the results of a recent investigation in which his firm had been engaged, offered him a cigar, offered another, on second thoughts, to Bendrihem, and seeking for a subject of conversation, passed cleverly through the tendencies of modern sculpture to the failing stocks of good Bordeaux in the City of London. Mark, though instructed and amused, found it impossible to take him seriously. Mr Montrose’s exterior was too magnificent to be entirely real. Simon Bendrihem said little. It depressed him to observe that Montrose, even though he had wealth, standing and solid social position, should still be so eager to impress his listeners.

  Montrose allowed the conversation to die away, and smiled an invitation to Ottery to state his business.

  “Mr Bendrihem and I,” Ottery began, “are interested in the importation of gold, bank notes and securities on behalf of clients in this country and abroad. As a rule, our transactions are not important enough to interest a firm such as Klein & Marcus. But on this occasion we have been instrumental in recovering assets of great value for a very distinguished personage. Needless to say, we trust to your discretion.”

  Otto Montrose bowed in exquisite silence and waited.

  “Our client is connected with the former royal family of Russia,” continued Ottery unctuously. “She is, I believe, personally known to you.”

  “A lady?” asked Montrose thoughtfully.

  “A most unfortunate and distinguished lady.”

  “She is received at our court? Forgive me if the question is indiscreet.”

  “Not at all indiscreet. She has been invited to make her home in England. I rather think that she draws a pension from the privy purse.”

  “I understand so too,” said Otto Montrose quietly. “I am of course at Her Royal—at your client’s disposal.”

  “Thank you,” Ottery replied with dignity. “She would of course have preferred to deal with you direct, but a firm of your standing couldn’t depart from strict commercial practice.”

  “Mr Montrose,” said Bendrihem, “is not always actuated by commercial motives. We know that he is in the confidence of the Foreign Office.”

  Otto Montrose beamed. He did occasionally receive routine enquiries and suggestions from the Foreign Office, and acted on them punctiliously, on occasion landing himself in unnecessary losses for the sake of a patriotic glow. Like most international bankers, his nationalism was profound.

  “I like to belie
ve I have sometimes been of use,” he purred.

  “When I said your business was strictly commercial,” Mark explained, taking his cue, “I meant that you couldn’t be mixed up in any doubtful deal. You have to think of your national position as a banker. My firm is also prevented from undertaking ventures of this sort. It wouldn’t do at all for a leading firm of chartered accountants to break the laws of a foreign country. But we do recognise that if only foreign assets could be realised, a valued client might sometimes be saved from going into liquidation. Mr Bendrihem undertakes the recovery of such assets. He usually acts alone, but this particular transaction is so large that I have gone into partnership with him. He has been fortunate enough to find a Mr Manning, a linguist, discreet, and admirably fitted to deal with foreign officials, especially if—er—open to persuasion.”

  “I quite understand,” said Montrose. “A necessary hanger-on of business.”

  “A hanger-on!” agreed Ottery with gusto. “An unsavoury tool! An international lickspittle!”

  “Quite! Quite!” said Montrose, alarmed.

  Bendrihem, fearing that Mark’s imagination was about to run away with him, took up the tale.

  “Our Mr Manning,” he said, “is arriving on the 20th by the American Broker with a consignment of gold coin and bullion, the exact value of which is unknown to us or to our client. The weight is about 1065 pounds. We wish to sell this on arrival, subject to proper weighing and assay. Will you buy it from us?”

  Mr Montrose toyed with his eyeglass. Though he pretended to know the identity of the Russian princess, she might be any of three or four to whom he bowed respectfully at theatres and art exhibitions; but he did not doubt Ottery’s good faith and was fascinated by the glamour of the two words, privy purse. Any favours he could do would certainly be known in the right quarters. He was aware that he was being easily satisfied, but he could not complain if the sellers should insist on preserving a greater discretion than usual.

  “It is somewhat irregular,” he said. “May I ask why the gold was not sold in America?”

  “Mr Manning has merely been in transit through the United States,” Ottery explained. “And we have no connections there. Our client was particularly anxious that the gold should be received and valued by an English firm of first-class standing.”

  “Most properly,” Montrose agreed. “I take it then that you wish me to receive the gold from Mr Manning and to dispose of it through the usual channels.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I shall be compelled to make rather an outrageous charge,” said the banker. “I know that you must both be quite satisfied that the ownership of the gold will never be questioned. But there might be some legal complication that we do not foresee.”

  “We’ll give you a letter of indemnity, of course,” said Ottery.

  “Yes, I should like that. I must also get in touch with the managing director of the shipping company and explain to him that a fair rate of freight on the bullion will be duly paid. I should not like them to think that the City would concur in the shipping of gold as personal baggage. Well, gentlemen,” said Montrose, getting up and dominating his visitors by the splendour of his presence, “I will contract to take over your gold on arrival, value it and sell on the market at Rothschilds’ price of the day. I shall take five per cent on the deal. That is a very stiff commission, and in a way I should prefer not to touch the business at all. I am afraid your client may be discontented.”

  “Not a bit!” said Ottery cheerfully. “She’ll be very grateful.”

  “We ourselves,” Bendrihem added, “are taking practically nothing but Mr Manning’s expenses.”

  “I expect she’ll call on you to thank you,” suggested Mark. “And then you can give her an evening out with the five per cent. She loves dancing.”

  Otto Montrose showed by a slight quiver of the nostrils his resentment at this vulgarity.

  “I never mix business with pleasure,” he remarked superbly. “Should I meet the lady again, as I hope I shall, this little service I have been able to do her must not be mentioned between us.”

  “I’ll tell her that,” said Ottery. “I think I can assure you that it won’t.”

  As soon as the American Broker passed the Ambrose Light and his steward left him alone in the cabin, Toby unpacked his suitcases and transferred all the gold to the wardrobe trunk. Throughout the voyage it stood, locked and immovable, in a corner of his stateroom. He explained to the steward that it contained the books and samples which had so weighted his hand baggage when he came aboard.

  The twelve days passed with the tranquillity of utter boredom and the biliousness of a North Atlantic crossing. The library was full of love stories in Sussex. The only women under forty were a party of golfing lassies who clumped steadfastly round the deck every morning, serenaded themselves with a gramophone every afternoon, and at night decked their bodies, thickened with exercise like those of Central European peasants, in the incongruous silks and chiffons of townswomen. He settled down to bridge in the smoking room with a Rhode Island judge, an antique French diplomat and a discreet, portly and bookish Londoner who let it be understood that he was the agent for a religious publisher, but eventually confessed to Toby, in the strictest secrecy and after the sixth pink gin, that he was a butler.

  He knew that he could expect no word from Ottery and Bendrihem until a day or two before his arrival; but there was still nothing when the ship passed Plymouth. The purser for the second time reminded him that he had not filled in his baggage declaration. He began to haunt the wireless cabin and insist that there had been some mistake. He was already watching the melancholy cliffs of the South Downs, white only by contrast with the short grey seas of the Channel, when the deck steward brought him a radio. He tore it open. It read:—

  “GOOD LUCK AND ALL MY LOVE. IRMA.”

  He offered up to her silent and surly thanks, and, since he was profoundly disappointed by the radio and ashamed of himself for being so, turned on two county champions an unconscious look of such saturnine dislike that the poor girls faded away, chattering with manly loudness to cover their embarrassment.

  Ten minutes later he was handed the message that he wanted:—

  “YOU ARE IN OUR EMPLOY OTTERY BENDRIHEM DEALERS IN GOLD AND PRECIOUS METALS STOP MEETING YOU GRAVESEND YOHO AND A BOTTLE OF RUM.”

  Toby admitted that the cliffs of England might indeed appear white to anyone who had seen the sun on them, and despatched a long and tender wire to Irma.

  When he awoke next morning the Essex shore showed the last of its trees and marshes through the gentle mist, and at breakfast the wharves of London began to close in upon its splendid river. The launch that fussed out importantly from Gravesend with passport and medical officials carried on its upper deck a tall, dark man who seemed subtly to dissociate himself from the sordid routine of the Port of London Authority, whose black felt hat and overcoat, even when seen from above, had an unmistakable air of distinction. Bendrihem and Ottery, solid and prosperous with bowler hats and well-rolled umbrellas, were evidently in attendance upon this magnificence. The three climbed the ladder with a preoccupied air and advanced to greet him. Gold apparently commanded the same respect as a foreign potentate or a corpse. Toby reminded himself that he was not only the employee of Ottery, Bendrihem & Co., but the conductor and guardian of half a ton of yellow holiness.

  “Our Mr Manning,” said Mark to the dark man—and then to Toby: “Mr Otto Montrose of Klein & Marcus.”

  “Indeed,” said Toby impressively.

  Montrose shook hands with an air of heartiness.

  “I hope you have had a pleasant voyage,” he said.

  “Thanks very much. As good as could be expected.”

  “I think congratulations are in order!” said Montrose, smiling at him and his employers with princely approval.

  “Yes. So far. I think they are.” />
  “From now on it is just a matter of the usual routine,” Montrose assured him. “The bullion is—?”

  “In my cabin.”

  “Packing?”

  “A wardrobe trunk.”

  “You mean a wardrobe trunk?” asked Otto Montrose, raising eyebrows even and exquisite as sealskin upon ivory.

  “A wardrobe trunk.”

  “How very extraordinary! It is sealed, I presume?”

  “No,” said Toby. “Could we seal it now?”

  “I hardly see any point in that,” the banker answered. “I supposed of course that you had accepted it from an accredited agent and given your receipt. You understand that we have no control over the original value.”

  Under the quizzical glance that marked him off as certainly incompetent and probably dishonest, Toby was overcome by an illogical feeling that he was both. He looked at his supposed principals for help.

  “We have the completest confidence in our Mr Manning,” said Bendrihem shortly.

  He was as annoyed as Toby. For a moment he himself believed in the Russian princess. Otto Montrose was certainly impressive.

  “Which I naturally share,” said Montrose with a courtesy that sounded and was intended to sound insincere. “I was only thinking that if your client chose to demand an exact account—”

  “She will receive it from me. Or, if she prefers it, from Messrs Plug, Plug & Ottery. We are responsible for the recovery of the assets, Montrose. Their valuation we have agreed to leave to you.”

  Ottery’s voice summoned to his aid unseen hosts of family solicitors, deed boxes and dust, charters and integrity. The banker was put out. To himself, though to no one else, his fragility was terribly apparent when he heard professionalism thundering down the years from Domesday Book to the Institute of Chartered Accountants.

  “Quite! Quite!” he said hastily, and turned to the Customs officer who was standing at a respectful distance.

  “I am afraid that this consignment of bullion has arrived in a most improper manner,” he said.