by Nevil Shute
Warren shook his head. ‘I can’t do that. I’ve got to keep things going.’
They discussed the matter for a little. ‘Well,’ said Davies at last. ‘I’ll make you up a tonic. But really, you should take it easier, you know.’
The financier smiled. ‘You might as well tell a chap who’s out of work to drink three pints of milk a day.’
The young man flushed. ‘I’m here to tell people what they ought to do. I can’t see that they do it, either with you or anybody else.’
Warren nodded. ‘That’s right — I’m sorry I said that about the milk. But I can’t get a holiday just yet.’
He went back to London on the evening train, carrying with him in his bag a large bottle of medicine, like any out-patient. Miss MacMahon walked with him to the station and saw him off.
‘Mind you take that tonic,’ she reminded him. ‘It cost a lot of money, and we didn’t give it you for fun.’
He smiled. ‘It’s good of you to look after me like this,’ he said quietly.
‘Why, no,’ she said. ‘It’s good of you to look after us.’
The train carried him away towards Newcastle, and she turned back to the hospital. In the corridor, outside the Common Room, she stopped Davies.
‘What did you think of Mr Warren?’
The sandy-haired young man considered seriously for a minute. ‘There’s nothing organically wrong, you understand. He’s very much run down. A certain amount of nervous indigestion, and that sort of thing. I got the impression that he was working far harder than he ought to, probably worrying about his work. But I imagine that’s his normal life.’
The Almoner bit her lip. ‘That’s half the trouble.’
During the early months of the New Year employment in the Yard increased enormously. By the end of January about four hundred and eighty men were working on the tankers; in the next month the figure rose to over seven hundred, and to a thousand by the end of March. With this increase in employment in the town, shops of all sorts began to come to life again; exteriors were repainted, giving Palmer Street a less desolate appearance, windows became filled with the new stock. A new shop opened to sell bicycles and motor bicycles; the increase of the traffic in the streets became most noticeable.
In April the Yard got another order, for a cargo steamer of three thousand tons.
It came through Sir David Hogan, who induced an impecunious shipowner associate to speculate on the future to the extent of ordering a replacement to his fleet. The deal was placed with the Yard through Warren Sons and Mortimer; the price was cut to bedrock for the sake of the order.
‘Lord love us,’ said Grierson. ‘We’ll have to call this one the Misery. At that price she’ll be nothing but grief to us.’
Jennings turned over the pages of the contract. ‘It says here she’s to be called the Argosy. Twelve-inch lettering bow and stern.’
‘Argosy nothing. She’ll be the Misery to us.’
‘She’ll give us continuity of work,’ said Warren. ‘Time enough to worry about prices when we’ve got our reputation back as builders of good ships. Till then we’ve got to take what we can get, and like it.’
He took his tale to Miss MacMahon, and told her all about it. ‘It’s wonderful,’ she exclaimed. ‘You must be terribly proud to have done this. Because this is a real order, isn’t it? I mean, there isn’t a worm in this apple?’
Warren smiled. ‘No — this one is comparatively sound.’
She considered for a minute. ‘There’s one point that I don’t quite see,’ she said. ‘Why did your firm have to come into it at all? Why wasn’t the order placed straight with the Yard?’
He smiled, a little cynically. ‘Shipbuilding finance,’ he said. ‘It sounds better put that way. Ordinary people call it hire purchase.’
‘Oh ...’
‘In times like these,’ he explained, ‘the shipowner has all his money locked up in his ships. He may want another ship, but he hasn’t got the cash to pay for it. The shipbuilder, on the other hand, hasn’t got the money to build it.’
‘But that’s absurd,’ she said. ‘You can’t get anywhere, if that’s the way of it.’
He smiled. ‘Oh, yes, you can. They both come running to the bank to borrow money.’
There was a momentary silence.
‘I see,’ she said. ‘So Sharples can’t quite get along without you, even yet.’
‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘But every order that we get brings the Yard nearer to standing on its own feet. That’s why I’m so pleased we’ve got this little ship to build. It means that owners will consider us again.’
She eyed him steadily. ‘So far as I can see, it means that one bank is considering us all the time.’
‘That may be. But I couldn’t have gone against the owner, if he’d had no confidence that Sharples could turn out a decent ship.’
She turned towards the window. ‘Sharples is getting like it used to be,’ she said. She stared out into the street. ‘Last year, on a Saturday night about this time, there wouldn’t have been a soul about. Just — desolate. And now, look at them.’
He came and stood beside her. The street was thronged with women shopping with their men, laden with baskets and with paper bags, shabby and ragged, but alive and vital in the light of the street-lamps. A few cars, tradesmen’s vans, stood in the road; there were many bicycles.
‘It’s different, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘They’re talking about getting the trams running.’
‘It’s certainly a change.’ He smiled. ‘Another sign of progress. I didn’t know you had an evening paper here.’
She nodded. ‘Did you see the boy?’
‘Down there, coming towards us.’
She peered down the street. ‘It’s only on Saturdays that we get that. Because of the football news. It comes from Newcastle.’
They stood and watched the crowd as the boy came towards them. For a minute he was hidden from their sight. Then the crowd parted and he was quite near to them; his placard was displayed before their eyes.
It said: ‘Revolution in Laevatia’.
‘Oh — look,’ said the girl. ‘Does that mean anything?’
She glanced up quickly at Warren; his face was very hard. ‘It’s a bad one, that,’ he said quietly. ‘Let me go and get a paper.’
He came back in a minute with the paper in his hand, and spread it out upon her table. Together they read down the short account in silence.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘It couldn’t have been worse.’
She laid her hand upon his arm. ‘I’m terribly sorry. Did you know any of these people who were shot? Deleberi, the Prime Minister — did you know him?’
He nodded. ‘He wasn’t a bad chap.’ He paused. ‘The other one — Theopoulos — the one who was shot in the cabaret. He was the one I did the business with.’
There was a long silence. The girl looked up at him at last, powerless to help. ‘This is a very bad one,’ he repeated. ‘I don’t know what this is going to mean.’
She turned again to the paper. ‘I don’t understand about these parties. The People’s Party were in power, were they?’
He nodded. ‘They were the conservatives. The Government were pretty stable under them. But this other lot — the Social Reform Party — they’re just the mob. And look who’s leading them!’
She stared at it, uncomprehending. ‘Potiscu? Did you know him?’
He laughed shortly. ‘He’s the one who got the umbrella.’
He stared at the account again. ‘Looting — and burning — murdering in cabarets — soldiers shooting down their officers in cafés.... God knows what this will mean to us, up here.’
She stared up at him, open-eyed. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’
He smiled. ‘Don’t worry — it’ll all pan out all right. But I must get along to London right away.’
He caught the night train down from Newcastle, and was in London in the early hours of Sunday morning. He went straight to his flat and read the morning papers
carefully; the situation was as bad as it could be. He spent an hour at the Laevatian Embassy, but got little comfort there; in the afternoon he attended an emergency conference at the London offices of Laevol Ltd. He came away from that with little new information, but with one certainty: the preference dividend, due in May and secured upon the profits of the State Railway, would not be paid.
‘There can’t be any profit on the railway after this,’ remarked the secretary. ‘Look at the Decree — free transport of all food materials and free travelling for all manual workers. There cannot possibly be any profit after that to pay our dividend. And anyway, they’ll probably rescind the Agreement now — it’s subject to Laevatian law, that one.’
Warren’s lips narrowed to a line. ‘It’s bad,’ he said.
‘It’s bad, all right,’ remarked the secretary, a little hostile. ‘This should have been foreseen.’
In the City the next morning, the Laevatian news was treated with concerned derision, as a joke in rather poor taste. During the day the Laevol shares fell catastrophically from twenty-two shillings to fourteen and six; next day they were marked down to about nine shillings, where they hovered for a week or two. A feeling of hostility was evident; the Argus, relating the news, took the occasion to comment acidly upon the ‘flotation of a certain company, which would now seem to be a subject for investigation’.
Mr Todd, who held few of the Laevol shares, took the matter philosophically. ‘Write ’em off the books,’ he said. ‘They’ll never be worth anything now.’
Mr Castroni was not amused. ‘My godfathers,’ he said. ‘To hear you talk! I put the best clients that I’ve got into this thing, and look at it now! Thirty thousand pounds of my clients’ money gone already, and the rest not worth a sausage. Look at that!’
‘Moral — use your own judgement, and not other people’s,’ said Mr Todd.
Mr Castroni ground his cigarette out in the tray. ‘This thing’s a bloody racket,’ he said bitterly, ‘and I’ve let Warren suck me in. I’ve been a fool, and now I’ve got to pay for it. I felt that there was something crooked in it when he gave the Laevol order to his other company, that Hawside thing. That paper’s right — there’s something here wants digging into, and I’m going to do it.’
Mr Todd gazed at him in wonder. ‘You won’t find anything that you can lay a finger on,’ he said. ‘Look at the issues that they’ve been behind.’
‘That may be,’ said Mr Castroni. ‘If there’s nothing in it but a run of bad luck, I shall be glad. But with the letters I’ve been getting from my clients ...’
He broke off. ‘There’s a retired canon down at Shoreham,’ he said bitterly. ‘One of the best I’ve got. And now, he rings me up to tell me that I’ve swindled him. Me! I’ve come to the conclusion that he has been swindled, but it’s not by me.’
His researches led him in the end to Warren’s office. Warren received him courteously.
‘I agree,’ he said, after the first discussion, ‘that the Company has had a setback. I am concerned about it, because in some degree I feel it as a reflection on my House. Our issues do not usually have setbacks of this sort. But then, a revolution is itself unusual.’
Mr Castroni eyed him for a minute. ‘You had a bit of bad luck there. Now, I’ve been studying the Agreement with the then Government of Laevatia. It was rather an unusual proviso that the contract for the ships be placed through your House, rather than at public tender?’
Warren shrugged his shoulders. ‘That was a part of the deal. It was disclosed in the prospectus that you underwrote. Are you objecting to it now?’
Mr Castroni swallowed something. ‘I was merely remarking on the matter. Apart from that, the security for the dividend has fallen down. I didn’t understand that that was subject to Laevatian law.’
‘You should read the prospectus. But, in any case, an agreement between a foreign company and its own Government isn’t usually ruled by British law.’
He got up from his desk. ‘I see that you are feeling badly about Laevol,’ he said quietly, ‘and I am sorry for that. But, as I say, we didn’t cater for a revolution in the country.’
Mr Castroni rose to go. ‘I’m not only feeling badly,’ he said evenly. ‘I’m feeling that I’ve been had for a mug, but I can’t prove it yet.’
In spite of her inability to write English, to spell, and to type, and in spite of a certain physical disability, Miss ffolliot-Johnson had quite enough intelligence to follow the affairs of Laevol with interest. She was accustomed to spend occasional week-ends with her uncle down at Shoreham, but it was sheer coincidence that brought the canon to her uncle’s house to tea one Saturday.
Canon Ward-Stephenson was still full of his great trouble. ‘I am not a habitual dealer on the Stock Exchange,’ he informed his host, ‘ — far from it. We clergy have little money to indulge such tastes. But quite recently I was persuaded by my broker — persuaded, I may say, against my better judgement — to invest a very considerable sum, a very considerable sum indeed, in a new issue, Laevol Ltd.’
Miss ffolliot-Johnson stiffened to attention.
‘And what is the result? It appears to me — I may, of course, be in error — that all decency and honest dealing, all proper rectitude, have vanished from the City since the War. No, I do not think I am in error. I do not think that is an over-statement. The issue has hardly been upon the market for three months, and look at the shares now! I see that they are quoted at eight shillings and threepence for the one-pound shares, and are quite unlikely to declare the dividend which was supposed to have been guaranteed. To put the matter plainly, I have been swindled out of a great many hundreds of pounds.’
His host made sympathetic noises. ‘These bucket shops,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why they allow them to continue.’
‘But this was not a bucket shop,’ exclaimed the canon. ‘The Company was launched by a firm of bankers, Warren Sons and Mortimer, who were supposed to be above reproach. I satisfied myself upon that point most particularly. No, the fact of the matter is that there is an infection of dishonest dealing which has crept into the City since the War, even into concerns that seem to be of good repute.’
Miss ffolliot-Johnson laughed shortly. ‘You wouldn’t call Warren Sons and Mortimer a firm of good repute,’ she said shortly. ‘I mean, one has to be careful what company one gets into, even if one is only a secretary, don’t you think?’ She gazed appealingly at the canon. ‘I left as soon as I found out what sort of people they were running it.’
Her uncle explained. ‘My niece was employed by Warren Sons and Mortimer for a short time. They seem to be a very bad crowd.’
The girl nodded. ‘I never was in such a horrid office,’ she said mincingly. ‘I mean, it was just horrid. It’s not very nice to be where people are being swindled all day long, is it? The stories I could tell!’
Without a great deal of difficulty she was induced to tell them.
‘And then there was the Hawside Ship and Engineering Company,’ she said. ‘That was just awful, that was. Robbing the public, that’s what I call it.’
The canon’s heart turned over. He had about five hundred pounds invested in that company. He frowned. ‘What was the trouble there?’ he asked.
The girl laughed shortly. ‘All of it was trouble, if you ask me. Mr Warren had this shipyard that he’d bought by mistake or something, and he had it on his hands and it was just a dead loss to him, if you see what I mean. So he faked up this order from the Laevol Company, taking it out of one pocket and putting it into the other, that’s what I call it. And then he was able to make a big issue to the public, because of that. And then he sold the shipyard, which wasn’t worth anything at all, to the Hawside Company, and got it off his hands. You wouldn’t hardly credit what fools people are with their money.’
The canon winced.
‘I don’t see that there’s much harm in that,’ said her uncle mildly. ‘The shipyard may do very well, if it’s got orders.’
‘That�
�s what it said in the prospectus,’ said the girl. ‘But that’s all lies, just to take people in and make them put up their money.’
Canon Ward-Stephenson eyed her steadily. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘I know it’s all lies,’ she said defiantly. ‘His manager wrote to him to say that they were going to make a loss of over fifty thousand pounds, and Mr Warren put it in the prospectus that they were going to make a profit.’
Her uncle looked at her incredulously. ‘But that’s not right,’ he said. ‘You can go to prison for that.’
She tossed her head. ‘That’s where he ought to be, that Mr Warren.’
‘Are you sure that you aren’t making a mistake?’ enquired the canon.
Miss ffolliot-Johnson was offended. ‘If you don’t believe me, I could show you the letter.’
‘What letter?’ asked the canon.
She was a little confused. ‘Such a funny thing,’ she said. ‘When I left, I found some letters in my attaché case, because I did work for the firm out of hours, sometimes. And there was that one from the manager that said about the loss.’ She glanced at the canon sideways.
‘I should be very interested to see it,’ he remarked.
She tossed her head. ‘I don’t mind showing it to you.’
Three days later Mr Heinroth sat in quiet thought in his office for ten minutes, undisturbed. At the end of it he lifted the telephone upon his desk and rang up Warren.
‘Morning, old boy,’ he said. ‘Give me a quarter of an hour if I come round at once?’
‘What’s it about?’
‘Tell you when I see you. That all right? All right, old boy, I’ll come right over.’
Warren laid down the receiver. There was too much ‘old boy’ about that conversation to be altogether healthy. He had worked with Heinroth ever since the War, and knew his moods.
Mr Heinroth came into his office and accepted a cigarette. ‘First, about this Laevol order for the ships,’ he said. ‘Is it true that they’ve stopped progress payments to the Hawside Company?’
Warren passed a hand over his eyes. ‘Not quite. As you know, the Government has placed restrictions upon the export of credits from the country. The usual thing — there must be reciprocity.’
