Wheels within Wheels Page 20

  “Do you want to buy the house, then?”

  “That is just silly.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  Captain Fraser had expected such an onslaught. He was prepared for it, and in anticipation of it had divided the commission in a ratio of a third to two thirds, instead of fifty-fifty. In his opinion every squabble could be reduced or raised to a financial basis. He fancied that a hundred would square the Major. The suggestion that actually came surprised him.

  “What I want you to do is this. You will go to Lowenstein & Kohl. You will explain to them that I opened negotiations under a misapprehension, owing to misrepresentations that have been made to me by you. They will write me a letter apologizing for the fact that they have wasted so much of my time idly: they will also write to my solicitors whose address I will give you, explaining and apologizing. That will be dignified for me.”

  Captain Fraser was so surprised that at first he could not reply. That a man should start talking about dignity when there was a chance, if he played his cards properly, of pocketing a minimum of a hundred guineas! It was the most pre-war thing he had ever come across. The Major was a far easier proposition than he had dared anticipate. They would have to do some more things together.

  If that was all the Major wanted, he could satisfy him easily enough. He had taken the precaution of supplying himself with a certain amount of Lowenstein & Kohl stationery. The letters that he would write on it would be eminently satisfactory to the Major and his solicitors. He was the last person to object to eating humble pie for some one else. He was so relieved that he became positively hearty. Was he not a hundred pounds better off?

  “My dear Major,” he said, “I should have offered to do that myself. Of course I should never have allowed a person of your position to be made uncomfortable: never thought of course that anything of this kind would have arisen: wouldn’t have, but for this Hatry business; and now the collapse on Wall Street. People haven’t the money that they had, and those that have any are being careful. Things aren’t being at all easy nowadays.”

  “Suppose not. Suppose not.”

  The Major, now that he had got his way, became genial. His face had a chameleon quality. Its blue-veined scarlet was as suitable a setting for good humour as for bad. He clapped his hands.

  “A whiskey and soda: two whiskeys and sodas. Yes, of course you will, my dear fellow, of course. Can’t let a man drink alone. Two double whiskeys and sodas. Suppose things are bad. Never put money in anything speculative myself. Government bonds, and sound trustee stock, like the Royal Mail Steam Packet. Got quite a lot of that. People who gambled must be badly hit.”

  “They are that all right.”

  Captain Fraser was in a communicative mood. He explained how it was not only the people who had gambled that were going to be hit. But the people who played for safety. There was less money about. The gamblers set the pace. They set the value on money. They decided what money was worth. Take house property, for example. Because gamblers could not afford the standard of life they’d set themselves, an infinite number of houses were on the market. House values would drop, the whole business of mortgage would be upset with them. Houses had been mortgaged for far more than they were worth. It would pay people to have their mortgages foreclosed. They hadn’t realized it yet, but they would soon. In America people had bought houses on the instalment plan that had gone down to a half of their value. People would surrender the premiums and first instalments on their houses just as they had surrendered the premiums on their cars. It would be the devil. Houses on which the banks had advanced big money would be flung back at the builders. The banks were going to find themselves in a pretty muddle before long.

  The Major listened in the impersonally sympathetic way with which one listens to the account of other people’s troubles. He was safe enough: with his money well buttoned up in War Loan, and R.M.S.P. stock. Not like those poor devils who had gone up with the wave, and were coming down with it.

  “Do you think that this not taking over of his house will be a blow to this fellow, Newton? Had he been banking on it, do you imagine?”

  Fraser shook his head.

  “I shouldn’t fancy so. Newton’s a rich man. He’s got so many irons in the fire that it won’t worry him if one of them goes cool for a little.”

  • • • • •

  His view was the view of Lowenstein & Kohl, to whom later in the day he carried the news of the Major’s defection.

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” he said. “It’s one of those things you can’t rely on. The Major had been gambling: on margin—you know what soldiers are, thinking they can order the market as they would a regiment. His brokers sold him short, the old boy’s got to draw in his horns a little.”

  Messrs. Lowenstein & Kohl understood completely; they were very sorry for the Major: a pleasant, peppery little man. They were sorry to have missed the sale. But it was only a matter of time. Newton was the kind of man who could afford to wait. Not like some of these poor devils who were living on a shoe-string till they could get out of their big house and into a little one. Not like the poor Major who would probably have to live in some wretched flat in Bayswater till the tide had turned. They would try to get another purchaser for Mr. Newton’s house. Sooner or later they would be certain to find some one. It might take time, but they would do their best and it was only a matter of waiting.

  In the meantime, they were very grateful to Captain Fraser for all he had done.

  “Oh, and by the way,” he said, just as he was turning to go, as an afterthought: “if by any chance you get one or two rather curious letters from the old boy or his solicitors, don’t take any notice of them. He’s a bit worried, and you know how people get who’ve spent a lot of time in the tropics.”

  The house-agent nodded, knowingly. A bit batty. They’d take good care.

  • • • • •

  Back in his flat that evening Captain Fraser typed on Messrs. Lowenstein & Kohl’s notepaper letters of the most satisfactorily abject apology to Major Sir Martin Fortnum and his solicitors. How the agent would smile when he received the replies: the acknowledgement and acceptance of the apologies. “Batty,” he would say, “poor old boy, quite batty.”

  Fraser smiled to himself. Everyone was satisfied: the house-agents, the Major and himself. He was a hundred guineas better off than he had ever expected. A hundred and fifty, possibly. Yes. He would have gone up to a hundred and fifty if the Major had pressed the point. He could say that he had made a hundred and fifty pounds that day. He smiled confidently to himself. It was at a time like this that people like himself came out on top. The people with responsibilities, with property, with obligations were trembling in their shoes. But people like himself with no stakes anywhere, with nothing to lose, stood quite a chance of making something: like fishermen when the tall ships foundered; some wreckage or other would drift their way. Some treasure should be to hand for salvage. He wasn’t worrying. He wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t have an extra fifty each way on Silverside.

  • • • • •

  At the same time, in much the same spirit and for causes that were very similar Josef Bergheim in his New York office sat comparing the figures of the Amalgamated Trunks that came tapping through minute by minute on the tape machine with the amount and nature of the collateral held by those of his clients who had bought Amalgamated Trunks on margin. Every now and then he would draw a thick black line through a certain entry. “Wash out, Meredith,” he would say. “Sell Francis short.” There was a run on Amalgamated Trunks and he was not running any risks. Some brokers were quixotic: they did not sell their clients out. They held on. They asked for more collateral. By the time they had learnt there was no more collateral it was too late; they were out of pocket. He was not running any risks. He did not speculate himself. He did not make the profits; he was not going to risk the losses. He was like the fishermen who do not venture themselves upon high seas, but take what profit t
hey may when the tall ships founder. The last weeks had been on the whole extremely profitable. Who ever might have lost their millions, he had made his hundreds. As he would go on making his hundreds even if the promised recovery came. He had nothing to lose. He never had anything to lose. He had not been a bull in the good days; he was not being a bear in the lean. He was just not running risks.

  “Sell Bartle out,” he called, and the pencil went with a swift black sweep across a page, no, 105, 102 the ticker ran. His eye now was on Bauer’s account. Bauer had collateral to cover a drop of 95. Within an hour they’d have reached that figure. By noon they’d have well passed it. He had a temptation to sell now and enter the transaction at the point when it touched the level. It was a temptation he had had to resist many times during the last months. He had cursed himself sometimes for not playing the bear markets: just as he had cursed himself a year earlier for not playing the bull market. He had missed so many chances of making money. Equally he had missed innumerable chances of losing money. He would hold to his principles. Now as then. 101, 99, 97 the ticker went. 97, 96. “Sell out Bauer,” he called. “And send a note round,” he added, “telling him that I’ve done so.” 94, 92, the figures came.

  As he drew his pencil through the entry, a Western Union envelope was handed him. It was from New Orleans. It was signed John Shirley. “Does the Wall Street position affect the Santa Marta mine?”

  Bergheim smiled to himself. “My Topsy all safe.” It was like a child asking, when the news came that her home had been gutted out: “What happened to my poor Brer Rabbit?” And curiously enough, by one of those miracles that occasionally do happen, when a whole house has been destroyed, a child’s toy has been preserved; like the solitary prisoner who survived the destruction of St. Pierre. Where so many weightier vehicles had been derailed, the French Caribbean company was still in locomotion. As likely as not while everything was failing, it would succeed: oil would be struck: its value would rise beyond computation: and whereas a number of men who had invested their money cautiously and with apparent prudence were ruined, three or four men who had gambled recklessly at the one time when gambling was madness, would find themselves millionaires. More unlikely things happened. It pleased his sense of the sardonic to be able to send to one small gambler on this day when so many larger gamblers had failed disastrously: “Everything O.K.”

  • • • • •

  To John Shirley the news that work was to be continued on the oil well was more important than the disaster of the last five days. He had been wiped out. He had not needed to go near his broker to be told that. His money was in Kennecott, Montgomery Ward, and Eastmann Kodak. It had not worried him. The money had never been real to him. It had been wealth on paper. It was not capital from which an income was derived and a standard of living based. The money had come without effort on his part and had gone without effort on his part. The loss of it would make no difference to his plans. He was just as suitably placed to marry Julia as he had been two months back when the money that he had had sent him monthly had been trebled in value. He did not regret his gamble. If he had invested those five hundred dollars in bonds instead of buying stock on margin, he would have received in dividends about enough to pay his hosier and his petrol bill. That: not much else. Out of his gamble he had had five months’ fun, and he would have more fun with the continued allowance from New York. When a windfall came your way, you gambled if you had a sportsman’s instincts. And after all, what he had lost in one turn he might regain in the next. The market was bound to recover. Every one said it would. There were two things that mattered: that the monthly advance on Royalties should continue to be paid: and that the main block of his capital was untouched, safe in gilt-edged bonds.

  That was his insurance; his key to freedom; the platform on which he stood. As long as he had that nobody could touch him; nobody could criticize him. He was self-sufficient, self-supported. He had that which he prized most—independence. He need ask favours of no one.

  His life, he reflected, was precisely as it had been a year ago, except that he had this apartment, that he had the prospect of a continued monthly income, that Julia wore his engagement ring upon her finger. He wondered whether any man in the whole of America had been less affected by the typhoon of the last weeks.

  XIII

  The news that his house in Easton Square was not after all to be purchased by Major Sir Martin Fortnum was not received by Frank Newton with any of the indifference that Messrs. Lowenstein & Kohl had anticipated. The letter was brought to him as he sat watching the mist of a November day thickening over the bare parkland of his new home. It was a Friday. In another hour the first week-end guests would be arriving. He had dozed after lunch, content in the possession of his house and in the security of the future. From that content the letter unduly awakened him.

  It was such a letter as many had read and more had written since the Wall Street crash and the Hatry failure had demanded the readjustment of every plan and project not only in international, but in private, in domestic finance. It explained that Major Sir Martin Fortnum found himself in altered circumstances: that he regretted he was unable to complete the purchase as he had anticipated. Messrs. Lowenstein & Kohl commiserated with Mr. Newton. He had been most unfortunately treated. The Courts would no doubt offer him redress. But at such a time like this they very much doubted the wisdom of instigating such proceedings. He would probably lose more than he would gain. The great thing, in their opinion, was to find another purchaser. They would naturally employ their liveliest energies to this end. Perhaps in view of the changed conditions Mr. Frank Newton would be prepared to let instead of sell. They would be glad to hear from Mr. Newton on this point.

  Mr. Newton read and re-read the letter: although the facts of the case were too clear to need any second reading. So the house was not sold, and though he was not actually any poorer, since the value of the property remained—he did not for an instant believe that land values were going to break—there was a further sum of money locked up that he could not touch. There was so much money that he could not touch. His position was sound: he had no doubt of that. But he was short, uncomfortably short of ready cash. The Hatry failure and the Wall Street panic had involved him in unexpected losses. If only one or two of the irons that were heating in the fire would glow ruddy hot. If only that West Indian oil driller would strike oil. He had been over sanguine, he was prepared to concede that now, about that oil field. He would not enter into such an enterprise now, if the chance were to be offered him. But two years ago money had been so easy to earn that one had been ready to risk it light-heartedly. In no other time would he have taken such a risk.

  Walking to the window he looked out across his new estate. It was a very English scene. The formal garden with its thick box hedges, its smooth green lawns, its carefully weeded gravel paths; the lifted soil of the rose-beds; the red-brown wall facing towards the south with its apricot and peach trees stretched across it; a long herbaceous border at its foot; the pergola with its trailing ramblers, setting a screen between the garden and the rough parkland where a couple of cows were grazing; the mist rising about their legs, between the tall leafless chestnuts. It was very English. It suggested tradition, security, formality. Just as the Georgian house did with its stuccoed front, its rectangular window frames, its rounded window seat, its low slate roof. From the surface his own life must look as firm and solid as the house and garden; just as to a foreigner the life of England must seem firm and guarded. But England’s life was menaced. Perhaps his was, too. He was not worrying; there would be time enough for that in plenty later. He did not believe in meeting troubles till they came. He just had the feeling that too many things were pressing against him at one time.

  • • • • •

  No suggestion that he was oppressed by such a feeling was visible in the spirit with which an hour later he welcomed the first of his week-end guests. There were half a dozen people coming down: friends of his wife’s, a
part of her collection of young people. She liked meeting older people at lunch and dinner parties. It amused her to acquire the impressions of prominent personalities to whom she referred frequently in her conversation; not out of any feeling of snobbery but because since they interested her she assumed they would interest her guests; as they did. Three hours was all she was prepared to tolerate, however, of the company of the middle-aged and famous. For a week-end they were too much trouble.

  They had fads. They didn’t play golf; or else they played it abominably and insisted on playing it. They couldn’t ride; yet said riding was good for the liver, hired a hack from the livery stable, trotted it on macadamed roads, cantered it on metalled lanes and treated its mouth as though it were the steering wheel of a Ford traction engine.

  In the evenings they stayed hours talking over their port, which upset the servants; and subsequently were averse to bridge or too comatose to notice a discard.

  Her guests had to be able to entertain themselves. In the summer people could sit about under trees: could read: could go for walks. But in the winter the guest who could not ride, play golf and bridge was a nuisance. When, therefore, Daphne had stated that she would like Seton Rivers invited down, she had wrinkled her nose.

  “Darling, he wouldn’t fit.”

  “Why not?”

  “What would there be for him to do?”

  “What there’s always been for him to do.”

  “It was summer last time he was down. It was warm. We played tennis. He could watch. We had a picnic. But at a time like this, whatever will there be for him to do but mope about the place?”

  “He’ll be all right.”

  “Well, as long as you promise to look after him….”

  “I’ll look after him.”