The criticism was beautifully impersonal. His listeners felt that the gold had not a correct sense of its social standing.
“The authorities, as you know, have arranged for the formal inspection of the baggage in my vaults. But this may now be difficult. It is not sealed.”
“I think that we can stretch a point for you, Mr Montrose,” the Customs man answered cordially. “I will seal it now, and if you will be good enough to see that the seals are unbroken when it is opened in the presence of my colleague, there will be no difficulty.”
Toby led the procession to his cabin and then stood aside while Montrose examined the locks through his monocle.
“Who is it?” he whispered to Ottery.
“The fence, Toby! The fence! A bloody fine fence! Be polite!”
The sealed trunk was swiftly manhandled down to the tender, followed by Toby’s hand baggage, Montrose, Bendrihem and Ottery. The passengers watched with interest this favoured departure of their fellow. The Rhode Island judge would have it that he had at last talked to a member of the famed English Secret Service. The butler and the French diplomat decided that he was a naval officer travelling with some confidential machine. The golfing lassies were convinced that they had watched the discreet arrest of a notorious revolutionary.
Though the tender had but a voyage of five hundred yards to Gravesend, Otto Montrose at once climbed to the bridge, nodded affably to the captain and remained there.
“How on earth did you do it?” Toby asked his friends. “I expected you would keep me out of Execution Dock. But this is amazing.”
“Interest!” snorted Bendrihem, still angry. “That’s the secret. They are all accustomed to rushing gold on to the market like ripe peaches.”
“What’s his lordship getting out of it, Simon?”
“His lordship?”
“If not already, in a future honours list. I never saw a man so obviously fitted for a peerage of the United Kingdom.”
“Oh, Montrose! Five per cent.”
“It doesn’t seem very much.”
“It’s five thousand quid for two hours away from the office,” said Ottery, “if your weight is anywhere near right. Is there a gang, Toby? Or did you do the job alone?”
“I’ll tell you to-night if you’ll both dine with me. Where does his magnificence think it came from?”
“A lovely Romanoff, Toby! A luscious long Romanoff!”
“One sees,” said Bendrihem, cheering up a little, “the utter beauty of pearls and sadness.”
“She is frequently noticed at point-to-points in Gloucestershire,” Ottery re-joined.
“She paints,” said Bendrihem.
“With talent,” Ottery added. “The little hand that has made history could not but possess natural good taste.”
“She is believed to advise the most exclusive London houses on the purchase of their furs.”
“And has a pension from the privy purse.”
“You gave him that one, Ottery.”
“Did I? Well, it must be true.”
“But who is she?” Toby asked.
“God knows! We’re merely quoting Montrose. He told us all about our client while driving down to Gravesend. But being a perfect gentleman he didn’t mention names.”
“But why should she have gold in Mexico?”
“So it was Mexico!” Ottery exclaimed.
“Of course it was Mexico.”
“Well, we didn’t know. All you said was that you were in transit through the United States. You might have been coming from Siberia. Wherefore the sad-eyed Romanoff. Acting on our instructions, you went and dug up her petty cash.”
“I pictured an old retainer myself,” said Bendrihem, “faithfully guarding it until our Mr Manning turned up with a letter of introduction.”
“He couldn’t read, Simon,” said Toby reproachfully. “So I showed him the princess’s ring. Then I had to shoot two commissars and stand a state trial for wrecking the Five-Year Plan. But it turned out that the commissars had been engaged on the Seven-Year Plan, so I was allowed to leave. Have we time for a drink at Gravesend, or would it mean loss of interest?”
“We’ll make time!” declared Ottery. “God, what fun! What fun we do have! The judge said that the accused had grossly abused his position as a chartered accountant. In view of the gravity of the offence, he had no alternative but to sentence him to three years’ penal servitude.”
“How many do I get?” asked Toby.
“What’s the crime, old friend? We haven’t heard the crime yet.”
“Strictly speaking and indirectly, I suppose I have robbed the Bank of Mexico!”
“Oh, my God! Bendrihem, did you hear that?”
“Well,” said Bendrihem, extending his hands, “gold doesn’t grow on trees.”
When the tender reached Gravesend, Otto Montrose had the trunk transferred with the utmost formality to a small closed van. Toby was about to seat himself alongside the driver, leaving the limousine to his employers and Montrose, when Ottery whispered discreetly to the banker and pointed to the pub at the pier head.
“Can’t he wait?” asked Montrose.
“Better not! We shall get no good out of him unless he has a drink.”
“Curious creatures,” said the banker thoughtfully, “cut loose from all the ordinary restraints of society. One pities them. Well, I’ll come with you and see if they have anything fit to drink.”
He led the way into the dining room, and, after a minute examination of the pub’s short wine list, discovered upon it with satisfaction an Irish whiskey of which he alone had heard. They sipped it with ceremony. It was really excellent, though not in the least what they wanted to drink.
When the party arrived at the office of Klein & Marcus, a Customs officer was already awaiting them. They descended to the vaults, where the chief clerk reverently unpacked the trunk, laying the coin and bar on a polished counter and handing to an acolyte the various cheap Mexican garments with which the gold was ballasted. Toby, since he knew his own packing, was able to keep as straight a face as Otto Montrose, but Mark and the Customs man, seeing a 400-ounce ingot extracted from an immoderate pair of cotton combinations, gurgled simultaneously and thereafter avoided each other’s eyes. It was indecorous to laugh where a whisper ran through cold steel corridors and returned ashamed to its owner.
Montrose felt the desecration keenly. The laughter was forgivable, but the linen was not.
“If you will just check the list,” he said to Ottery, “I need detain you no longer.”
“What’s it all worth?” Toby asked.
“I really could not say. I could give you the approximate value of the European bullion, but some of these Mexican ingots I believe to be pure gold. I will have them assayed this morning.”
“More or less, what’s it worth?” Toby insisted.
“My business,” said Otto Montrose, “is to tell you exactly. Where may I send your trunk and linen?”
“Her Royal Highness,” said Bendrihem emphatically and savagely, “particularly asked that the trunk and its contents should be preserved for her as a keepsake. She will call for them in person.”
Otto Montrose reproved him with an eloquent stare for the indiscreet mention of their client, and held out his hand to Ottery to indicate that the affair was concluded.
“I shall telephone you at four o’clock,” he said, “and let you know the price at which I have sold.”
He put them into a taxi, together with Toby’s hand baggage, and said good-bye with a hearty good-humour that most favourably impressed the customers in the general office.
“Can we trust him?” asked Toby, as the taxi slid into a jammed and panting herd of mountainous buses, and stopped.
“Blasphemy in the very maw of Lombard Street!” Ottery protested. “The grasshopper will devour you,
Toby. He will rub you against his thighs and shriek and raven.”
“It’s all right with me,” said Toby, “so long as you are happy.”
“Klein & Marcus, you corrupt foreigner, would close their doors rather than do you out of a penny.”
“They play what you call the good old rules of the game,” Bendrihem explained.
“Like taxi-drivers,” said Toby dryly. “They’ll run the clock up another sixpence if they can, but return a pound note if you drop one on the floor. Where shall I leave your reverence?”
“At Ivy Lane with Bendrihem.”
“I wasn’t going to the office,” said Bendrihem.
“Come in for a minute, old friend,” said Ottery, faintly colouring. “I want to talk to you about accounts.”
“Of course, if you wish it,” Simon replied cordially. “Where shall we meet you to-night, Toby?”
“Anywhere you like.”
“Pepe’s?”
“If Mark can drink honest wine that has never seen a bottle.”
“Red ink, Toby. We will drink a great vat of red ink.”
“Seven-thirty, then. I’ll reserve the alcove.”
“But I must leave you before eleven.”
“Good God! Are you dancing or something?”
“Festive, Toby. Old Ottery is festive.”
Toby dropped the two at the corner of Ivy Lane and drove on to the rooms in Curzon Street where he usually stayed when he was in town. He bathed leisurely, rejoicing in fresh water after twelve days of salt, and lunched in his room on a grilled sole and a pint of bitter. After telephoning to Pepe to order a dinner for four and his favourite table, he went down to Hanson & Crane’s to report his arrival.
He crossed London Bridge unwillingly. Hanson & Crane were nearer and dearer in this thin sunshine than they had been on Laredo station. True, he had already resigned, but the resignation could be explained away. Seafair assumed that foreign food and hotels were hardships for any Englishman and that commercial travellers abroad, though they might buoy up their spirits with wine and women, were naturally subject to sudden spasms of homesickness.
He looked down upon the Pool of London. A tug with a string of barges butted her way upriver between the blank warehouses, her ungainly bows slinging the ebb tide aside in two clumsy bolsters of dun-coloured water. Commerce was solid. Commerce was understandable. And as an employee of Hanson & Crane he had no right to be disgusted with it. They treated him well, and expected him to watch over their good name as zealously as they watched over his. That was the devil of it all. Dear old Hanson & Crane was a fair model of what a commercial firm ought to be; but it was an exception, a survival from days when honour counted for more than profit. The ambitious sales manager of the 1930s could have no truck with such a firm. And if he stayed with them, he too would become an ambitious sales manager. There was no halfway house. Good Lord—if he hadn’t left the Danube & Ottoman, he would be to-day exactly like Otto Montrose!
Considerably heartened by this thought, Toby walked on down the Borough High Street. He stopped for a short chat with the porter of Hanson & Crane, and then went straight up to the export office.
“You’re looking well,” said Whitehead when the first greetings had been exchanged. “Have you had a good time?”
“Fine! How are Edie and the boy?”
“Same as ever, thanks very much.”
“And the office?”
“Jogging along. We’re all awfully pleased with your tour. Repeat orders are coming in already.”
“I’m glad. Can you do the Mexican anti-tank gun at the price?”
“Oh yes. It’s a damned fine idea. Seafair liked it. But it must fire a rubber pellet, you know. You and this man Xabec wanted something that would wipe out a whole family.”
“That’s the effect of Mexico,” Toby laughed.
Albert slipped into a discussion of the new agents, of credits and shipping. When he had received Toby’s personal impressions, he was silent.
“Say it!” Toby suggested.
“Well—I feel it’s my fault you’re discontented.”
“My dear old boy, I’m not a bit discontented!”
“I’m glad of that,” said Albert sincerely. “Then do consider taking your resignation back—unless, that is, something better has turned up. But this gold you’ve been handling isn’t yours, is it? It’s none of my business, I know.”
“It is your business. I’m damned sorry to leave Hanson & Crane, and I hope they feel that I gave them their money’s worth. I’ll tell you why I resigned to-night. Telephone Edie and say that you won’t be home for dinner.”
“She’s expecting me,” said Albert doubtfully.
“I know. But tell her I’m back and you want to hear why I am leaving.”
“She was awfully sorry to hear it. She was quite certain that we were going to run Hanson & Crane together. I told her it was ridiculous. But you know how women get these ideas.”
“She’s not far wrong, but it won’t be Hanson & Crane. Any letters for me? I’ll glance through them while you telephone.”
“There’s a cable for you. I quite forgot …”
Albert Whitehead opened a drawer of his desk and handed Toby a few letters and the cable. It had been despatched from Buenos Aires the previous day. It read:—
“GRACIAS HERMANO SALGO HOY CON SALVINIS PARA LONDRES VAPOR SAPPHIRE: MANUEL.”*
Toby thrust the letters unopened into his pocket, and brooded happily over the cable, while he waited for Albert to finish telephoning.
“It’s all right,” said Albert, hanging up the receiver. “She wanted to know why you can’t come and eat with us. I said that it was your first night in London and that you meant to get tight.”
“I do not mean to get tight,” said Toby firmly. “Tell me—do you know a ship called the Sapphire? The Plata to London?”
Albert glanced down the Argentine shipping list.
“Here she is!—11,000 tons. Sailed from B.A. yesterday, and calling Rio and Las Palmas. Why?”
“A pal of mine has wired to say he is coming to England on her. He’s the man I’m going to talk to you about, the owner of that gold. Is Seafair in?”
“Yes. I’ll tell him you’re here.”
Whitehead called his managing director on the office telephone and announced Mr Manning’s arrival. There was a longish conversation in which Mr Seafair was evidently letting himself go, confining his export manager to saying ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘No, sir’ in the proper places. Albert finally hung up the receiver and grinned.
“I gather he wasn’t pleased,” said Toby.
“He wasn’t. He asked whether you had another job and I told him you hadn’t. He said you were a bloody young fool, that he wouldn’t see you and that as your holiday in Mexico didn’t seem to have done you much good, you’d better take another week here. In other words, think it over. I wish you would. If it’s the travelling you’re sick of, I expect we could manage to use you on the home sales for a few months.”
Toby shook his head, deeply touched.
“It was a cold-blooded resignation, Bert—for good motives. They’d have to be damned good, I tell you, for me to refuse so much kindness.”
As the five-thirty to Croydon had not to be caught, Whitehead stayed late in the office discussing with Toby the problems and personalities of the South American trade and clearing up the odds and ends that no correspondence had been adequate to settle. At seven they dropped into the Duke of Wellington for gin and bitters and became so involved in shop that they were quarter of an hour late in arriving at Pepe’s.
Bendrihem and Ottery were already seated at the table with a bottle of sherry and a plate of olives and anchovies in front of them. Ottery was white-waist coated and beaming. He had removed a large hyacinth from the vase on the table and stuck it in his buttonhole.
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br /> “O execrable host!” cried Mark. “O sluggard belly! Can you not teach him manners, good Whitehead?”
“I’m afraid it’s my fault,” Albert answered. “I kept him talking business.”
“And he looked at his watch at half-past seven, and said, ‘If we take a taxi, we have just time for one more,’” Bendrihem remarked.
“You’re wrong, Simon! It was only twenty-five past seven. But I’m awfully sorry. Thanks for ordering sherry.”
“It’s on the estate,” said Mark. “We decided to teach you not to leave your fellow gangsters alone with the swag.”
“Have you heard from Klein & Marcus?”
Ottery pulled out his notebook.
“Sold to the Bank of England for £114,038/5/4,” he read. “Less five per cent commission, £5701/18/3. A cheque has been posted to-night to Ottery, Bendrihem & Co. for £108,336/7/1.”
“God!” Toby exclaimed.
“You have our bill, Bendrihem?”
Bendrihem handed to Toby a formal voucher, signed by himself and Ottery and countersigned by Pepe.
1 Sherry 6s. 6d.
Anchovies 4d.
Olives 3d.
7s. 1d.
“Gross embezzlement!” Toby laughed. “But what about your real bill? The expenses of founding Ottery, Bendrihem & Co.?”
“We’ll make you a birthday present of those,” said Mark. “But what are we to do with these great bags of money? You can’t simply let us bank a cheque like that in our name, Toby.”
“Why can’t I? I shall for three weeks.”
“You can’t,” Bendrihem insisted. “One or both of us might die, and you’d never recover it from the estate.”
“All right. Bank it in the name of Manuel Vargas—specimen signature to follow and the beneficiary to be identified by any of us four, jointly or severally.”
“But I don’t know him,” said Whitehead.
“You will, Bert—by the end of the evening. And then if I get run over by a bus and a shabby-looking devil with the face of a moulting hawk walks into Hanson & Crane and claims to be Manuel Vargas, you’ll know whether it’s he or not.”
Pepe placed on the table a low earthenware casserole with mussels and red pimientos decorating a mound of saffron-tinted rice. Toby served the paella, producing spoonfuls of little sausages and chicken from the interior. It was followed by a tournedos and mushrooms on toast.
The Third Hour Page 37
