Part 39

It was coming to a close like any other Friday afternoon. They were short-handed, for though the new boy, Gregory Thorpe from Hatcham, S.E., a lad with a singularly long face and spectacles, far more conscientious than Stanley but not so engaging, had been with them since Monday, Turgis had been absent since Monday too, and his place had not yet been filled. Fortunately, they had not been very busy this last day or two; the rush of a few weeks before appeared to be over now; Mr. Golspie had not been near the office since Tuesday, and had not sent in any new orders; and the next Anglo-Baltic boat was not due in until the following Monday; so that things were easier. Even without Turgis, they were getting through the work at the usual pace. Mr. Smeeth, glancing round over the top of his desk, thought they ought to have finished in another half-hour or three-quarters. He would get away about six, have his tea in comfort, with plenty of time to spare before the concert began. He was going to hear that symphony by Brahms, the same symphony he had heard before, the one that suddenly and gloriously broke into Ta _tum_ ta ta _tum_ tum. Another orchestra was playing it this time. It was lucky that the advertisement of the concert had caught his eye: Brahms’ Symphony No. 1. He had been looking forward all the week to hearing that symphony again, especially to that moment when the great melody would come sweeping out of the strings again. He had tried to remember it for weeks and weeks, and then suddenly it had returned to him--Ta _tum_ ta ta _tum_ tum. Brahms might be as classical and highbrow as they said he was (and Mr. Smeeth had been making a few inquiries), but the fact remained that the thought of his first symphony, that dark but splendid adventure, now warmed the heart of Herbert Norman Smeeth. Ta _tum_ ta ta _tum_ tum--but no, he must get on with his work, finish off and see that the others were finishing off too.

“Miss Matfield, have you anything for Mr. Dersingham to sign? Have you, Miss Sellers? Take them in now if you have.”

Mr. Dersingham was in the private office. He had been there most of the day. This was unusual, and rather queer because Mr. Dersingham did not appear to be very busy. He seemed to be waiting for something or somebody. Several times during the afternoon, when the outer door had opened, Mr. Smeeth had heard Mr. Dersingham come out of the private office, as if he could not bear to wait an extra half minute or so. He seemed to be jumpy, too, about telephone calls. Very unusual, rather queer, not like Mr. Dersingham. Mr. Smeeth came to the conclusion that it must be some private business, and therefore no affair of his.

“Now where’s that letter from Poppett and Sons?” he demanded. “It was on this desk an hour ago, I’ll swear. It’s a letter about their account, and I told one of you this morning we’d have to answer it to-day. It was you, wasn’t it, Miss Sellers? Well, have you taken their letter away, then? Just see if you have. Yes, there you are--that’s it. Bring it here and I’ll answer it now. Poppett and Sons, Poppett and Sons,” Mr. Smeeth repeated idly as he re-read their letter. “Ye-es. Are you ready? No, half a minute, though--my mistake. I’ll have to check that figure. Fi-ifty-fo-our pounds, thi-irte-een shillings--yes, yes, that’s all right. Now then----” and here Mr. Smeeth adjusted his eyeglasses and cleared his throat, giving a faintly pompous little cough. Even now, the thought that he, Herbert Norman Smeeth, was sitting there, a cashier, dictating letters to this firm and that, gave him a thrill. “--er--We are in receipt of your--er--communication--put the date in there, Miss Sellers--respecting our statement of account dated so-and-so--and beg to point out that this account was quite in order. You asked us to send down the goods by special road delivery and agreed that the extra carriage, paid by us, should be added to our account--no, just a minute--extra carriage, which had to be paid by us in the first place, should be charged to you, and this we accordingly did. We refer you to your letter--I have a note of that letter--ah! here it is--to your letter of the 4th of December last----”

Mr. Smeeth rounded off his letter and Miss Sellers hurried it away to her machine. Miss Matfield, who appeared to be in a great hurry, pulled a sheet of paper out of her typewriter with one fine sweep of the hand, and then furiously tidied a little pile of typewritten sheets. The new boy, Gregory, laboriously worked away at his letter copying, with the air of a man engaged in not very hopeful bacterial research. It was wearing away like any other Friday afternoon. There was nothing to suggest that it might blow up any minute, unless the unusual activities of Mr. Dersingham, who appeared to be moving uneasily now in the private office, were considered to be fantastically significant.

“Who was that?” Mr. Smeeth asked, after several doors had banged and Gregory had returned from behind the frosted glass partition.

“I think it was a telegraph boy, sir,” replied Gregory sadly.

“How d’you mean--you _think_ it was?”

“Mr. Dersingham was there, sir. He got there first, and he was holding the door open and taking something, so I couldn’t see who it was properly. I only saw an arm, and it looked like a telegraph boy. You see what I mean about the door, sir? It comes back, inside, when it opens, and Mr. Dersingham was holding it with one hand, and so the door was in the way, you see----”

“Yes, yes, yes, I see. No need to make such a song about it, boy.” There was a sad earnestness about this new boy that had been rather impressive at first, but now it only irritated Mr. Smeeth. He liked a boy to be conscientious with his work, but this one was too dolefully dutiful. You could not even relieve your feelings by telling him sharply to get on with his work, because he never stopped doing something, toiling away like a spectacled young sheep. Mr. Smeeth wished now he had chosen a brighter boy, even if the lad would have larked about a bit.

“Smeeth. Smeeth.”

“Yes, Mr. Dersingham,” Mr. Smeeth called back, frowning a little. He did not like to be summoned in this fashion, by a shout from the door of the private office; it was not dignified. He hurried in, however, for Mr. Dersingham sounded as if he had something important he wanted to say.

“Shut the door, Smeeth,” said Mr. Dersingham, who did not look so pink and cheerful as usual. “Oh, look here--have they nearly finished out there?”

“Just clearing up, sir.”

“All right, then,” said Mr. Dersingham wearily. “Have I signed everything? Tell ’em to let me have everything that must go off to-night, will you? I want ’em to clear out, and leave us alone. Do that now. Just get them to finish up as quick as possible.”

Wondering, rather apprehensive now, Mr. Smeeth bustled to and fro with letters to be signed, hurried on Miss Sellers and the boy, and in ten minutes had everything signed, copied, sealed up, and stamped. “Yes, yes,” he told them, “that’ll be all. You can go now. That’s right. Good-night, Miss Matfield. What’s that? Yes, I remember. Mr. Dersingham said you could have to-morrow morning off, didn’t he? Off for the week-end, eh? Lucky to be some people, Miss Matfield. Yes, yes, quite all right. Good-night. Good-night, Miss Sellers. And--what’s your name--Gregory, don’t forget you’ve got three registereds there; bring me the receipts in the morning. No, that’ll do. Good-night, good-night.” He returned to the private office. “All finished now, Mr. Dersingham. Yes, all gone.”

“All right, Smeeth. Bring the order book in, then the other books. Bring the order book in first.”

It looked as if he was going to have a little stock-taking and general survey of the business, a very wise thing to do too, now and again. Mr. Smeeth hoped that he would not be kept long, but otherwise he was quite pleased and proud, for there was nothing he liked better than these confidential talks about the business, and he was glad to see that Mr. Dersingham was taking himself seriously now as the head of a very flourishing little concern.

“Nothing wrong, I hope, Mr. Dersingham?” he said, when he had brought in all the books.

Mr. Dersingham gave a short laugh, and it was a very unpleasant sound. It startled Mr. Smeeth.

“Everything’s wrong, Smeeth, every damned thing, unless you can see a way out. Sit down, man, sit down. We’re going to be hours and hours on this job.”

Mr. Smeeth sat down, staring at him.

“Golspie’s cleared out,” Mr. Dersingham continued, “and he’s done us in, absolutely done us in. Oh, the rotten swine! God, I was a fool to trust that chap a yard! I ought to have known, I ought to have known. And now he’s gone. I rushed up to that flat of his in Maida Vale at lunch time, hoping to catch him in and have it out with him, but he’d gone--at least, the maid said he had, and it was only a furnished place he’d taken, and she’d been taken over with it, so I suppose she wasn’t lying about it. He’s going abroad, if he isn’t already gone. Clearing out properly, the rotten crook! This isn’t the only dirty game he’s been playing here, if you ask me. I always thought he had a few more irons in the fire besides his work here. He never spent more than half his time with our business. But he’s had plenty of time to do us down.” He was out of his chair now, kicking a ball of crumpled paper about the room.

“But what’s happened, Mr. Dersingham? I thought you knew he might leave us. You told me so a week or two ago, and you said you were getting him to sign an agreement, when he drew all that forward commission, so that you would have the agency.”

“Oh, we’ve got the agency all right,” cried Mr. Dersingham, with great bitterness. “No mistake about that. Only it’s not worth having now, that’s all. Mikorsky’s have raised all their prices. They say it’s owing to the increased cost of their new process and to some labour troubles and to some new government tax--oh, they’ve got all kinds of reasons, and they may be true and they may not, but the fact remains they’ve raised all their prices. They’re all up fifty and sixty and even seventy per cent.”

“As much as that? Good Lord, Mr. Dersingham, that’s a ridiculous advance. It makes them as dear as the most expensive of the old firms we were dealing with before, doesn’t it? I see, now.”

“No, you don’t see, you don’t see at all yet,” Mr. Dersingham yelled at him. “It’s a lot worse than that. Look at that telegram. Just look at it.”

“I don’t understand this, sir,” said Mr. Smeeth, after carefully reading the telegram. “Why did they send it?”

“They sent it because I’d wired to them asking if what Golspie had written to me was true. I thought he might have been bluffing, just out of devilish spite. But he wasn’t. They’re all in league together, of course, if you want my opinion, just a lot of rotten foreign swindlers with this chap Golspie the worst of the lot.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Dersingham. I can see it’s a bad business. But I don’t quite get the hang of it yet. They can’t have raised their prices already.”

“My God!--that’s just what they have done, and that filthy telegram confirms it.” Mr. Dersingham banged it so hard with his fist that he hurt his hand. Then he became quieter and sat down again. “I’m getting too excited. Sorry I yelled like that, Smeeth, though it’s enough to make any man shout his head off. I’ll explain. I got a letter from Golspie this morning, saying that he was clearing out. Here, you can read it for yourself.”

Mr. Smeeth read it through twice. It pretended to be an ordinary business letter, but there was a good deal of unpleasant irony in it. One phrase, which practically said that Mr. Dersingham had tried to sneak the agency for himself and had not succeeded, made Mr. Smeeth look up and ask a question. “Did you really write to those people and try to get the agency yourself, sir?” he asked.

Mr. Dersingham nodded.

Mr. Smeeth hesitated a moment. “I don’t think you ought to have done that, sir,” he said finally, respectful but reproachful.

“That’s my business, Smeeth.”

Mr. Smeeth looked down and remained silent. Neither of them spoke for a minute or two, and the room was strangely quiet.

“Oh well,” cried Mr. Dersingham, struggling with his embarrassment, “perhaps I oughtn’t to. As it’s turned out, it was a bad move. But I wasn’t really trying anything underhand, y’know, Smeeth. It wasn’t as if I was trying to take a fellow’s living away from him, working behind his back. I know it might look a bit like that, to anybody who didn’t know the circumstances, but it wasn’t. This chap Golspie was obviously one of these here-to-day-and-gone-to-morrow fellows--didn’t make any secret of it, boasted of it--and I never liked the look of him and I didn’t know what tricks he might be up to. He came here, made use of our connection with the trade and our organisation and everything and drew a heavy commission, as you know, and all the time he walked about the place as if he owned it. As I told you before, I couldn’t stand the chap--a terrible bounder. I tried to be as friendly as possible at first, but it wouldn’t work. And my wife took a strong dislike to him--she only met him once, but you know what women are, and she saw what he was in five minutes--and she was always telling me to have nothing more to do with him, to get rid of him. So I just wrote a confidential letter to Mikorsky’s, saying it would pay them to have the agency properly in the hands of a wholesale firm here like ours, and that the--er--present arrangement wasn’t really satisfactory to them or to us either, and that they ought to consider it. All in confidence, mind. That was just before he went over there, and of course they told him all about it. I didn’t know they were friends of his. I thought they had an ordinary business agreement, and I considered I was entitled to suggest another business agreement, leaving Golspie out.”

“Yes, I see that,” said Mr. Smeeth, still a little doubtful. “And I suppose they told him then, and that’s what put his back up?”

“Oh, they did that, but I think he’d been ready to play any dirty little trick right from the first. He isn’t a gentleman--never looked like one--and he isn’t even an ordinary decent business man. He’s just an adventurer, trying his hand at anything for tuppence. No wonder he never stopped anywhere long--too crooked! But you see what he says there, that he encloses a little document that had--what is it?--escaped his memory. Well, there’s the little document, there--that statement of Mikorsky’s, dated when he was there, raising all the prices. There’s the full list of ’em--up fifty to seventy per cent.”

“But--but,” Mr. Smeeth stammered, as he looked at this list, “we can’t be expected to pay these prices. We’ve already bought heavily on the old prices.”

“Have we? Golspie did the buying, and I can’t find any acknowledgment from them.”

“Well, can’t we cancel the last orders then, Mr. Dersingham? I never heard of such a thing. It’s not reasonable. Here their prices have been up for weeks and weeks, and we’ve been thinking we were buying at the old rates. They can’t force us to take the stuff at these prices, surely.”

“I don’t know. That side of it doesn’t matter, anyhow. The point is, Smeeth--don’t you see?--whether we’ve bought the stuff or not, we’ve _sold it_.”

Mr. Smeeth did see; he saw with fatal clearness; and his dismay must have been written on his face.

“Yes,” Mr. Dersingham continued, “we’ve sold it, stacks and stacks of it, thousands of square feet, big orders, Smeeth, big orders, all those orders we paid Golspie that commission on. You might well look like that. I’ve been feeling like that all day, even though I still hoped there might be a mistake--before that telegram came.”

“But, Mr. Dersingham--it’s--it’s ruination, sheer ruination.”

“And it’s damnably, damnably unfair, Smeeth. We’ve simply been swindled. Listen, d’you think there’s any chance of us getting all those orders cancelled here?”

Mr. Smeeth thought for a minute, then slowly shook his head. “We’ve undertaken to deliver the stuff, Mr. Dersingham, and there’s no getting out of that. I mean to say, if our customers say ‘We want it,’ then they’ll have to have it and they can compel us to let them have it at the price we sold it, or compel us to go out of business. No argument about that at all, sir.”

“What I’m wondering is this, Smeeth. It’s not our fault this has happened. I mean to say, it’s not the ordinary case of selling the stuff before you’ve bought it, hoping for a fall in prices, and then getting nipped because the price goes up when you have to deliver the stuff. It’s nothing like that, you see. We’ve been let down by sheer rotten trickery. Not our fault at all. Now I’m wondering if our customers would agree to cancel the orders if I explained the situation to them, told them straight out that Golspie was a wrong ’un and we’ve been let down. It’s worth trying, isn’t it? Where’s that order book? I want to see who are about the biggest buyers of these last lots that I can get hold of at once. What about Brown and Gorstein? They’re not far away.”

“And they’ve bought as much as anybody,” said Mr. Smeeth. “We’ve a lot to deliver to them. You might get hold of Mr. Gorstein.”

“I’ll ring up and see if he’s there.” And while he waited, receiver in hand, he added: “Jot down what Brown and Gorstein have bought, will you, Smeeth?” By the time Mr. Smeeth had done this, Mr. Dersingham had learned that Gorstein was still there and was willing to see him at once. “I’ll go over at once,” said Mr. Dersingham. “I’ll just tell my wife first not to expect me back in a hurry. I believe we were going out to play bridge with somebody. My hat!--I feel as much like playing bridge to-night as I do like--like--spinning tops.”

When the other had finished his telephoning, Mr. Smeeth had the order book and some paper in front of him. “While you’re there, Mr. Dersingham, I’ll try and work out the whole thing on the new prices.”

“I was going to tell you to do that,” said Mr. Dersingham, as he took down his hat and coat. “Get it all worked out while I’m up at Brown and Gorstein’s. God!--we’re in a mess. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Left to himself, Mr. Smeeth did not think. He refused to think. He applied himself sternly to the task before him, and for the next quarter of an hour never looked up from his books and his calculations. He was not Herbert Norman Smeeth, but simply the master of the neat little figures, and he added and subtracted and multiplied them without letting his mind wander away from their austere but calculable world, in which he had spent so many pleasant hours. He had plenty to do. All the orders of the last few weeks, back to the early part of December, in fact, had to be estimated on the basis of these new prices, and he had to add the usual costs and then the commission already paid to Golspie. He did it with his usual neatness, accuracy, thoroughness, producing a statement that could be understood at a glance. At the end of quarter of an hour, the telephone rang and disturbed him, but it was not a call for them. Mechanically, then, he filled his pipe, and spent a minute or two listening idly to the various sounds that came from the steps outside, from Angel Pavement, from the City beyond, a sort of vague symphony, and the only one, it seemed, that he would hear that night. He put his pipe in his mouth unlit, and bent over his figures again. Time slipped away as the totals mounted up on the statement, and soon half an hour had gone. He turned now to other books, to the general financial side of the matter, estimating what they had in hand and what was due to them.

Mr. Dersingham came bursting in, large and active, but a figure of misery. “It’s no use, Smeeth. We’re absolutely done.”

“What did Mr. Gorstein say?”

“I told them as much as I could, and they laughed at me, they did, honestly they did, they just laughed at me. Pretended not to, pretended to be very sympathetic and all that, but I knew. That fellow Gorstein’s another rotter, if you ask me. Very sorry and all that, hard luck on us, but of course they’d bought what we’d offered them, and they’d undertaken to supply _their_ customers and made contracts on what they’d bought from us, and we’d have to deliver, and no nonsense about it. And they practically told me that everybody else in the trade would say the same thing, but only be a bit more damned insolent about it. No, I see that now, plainly enough. There’s no getting out of it.”

“But, Mr. Dersingham, it’s a terrible position we’re in, it really is.”

“Good God! man, you’ve no need to tell me that. It’s the foulest mess I ever dreamed of, and all because of that dirty crook. Honestly, Smeeth, I don’t pretend to be a bruiser or anything of that sort, but if I saw that chap now, I’d go for him. I’d either knock him down or he’d have to knock me down. Have you been working it all out? What does it look like?”

Mr. Smeeth now considered his totals and the full implication of them for the first time. He handed the papers across the table.

Mr. Dersingham, running a finger across his teeth and allowing his jaw to drop, stared at them for several minutes without saying a word. Then he queried one or two figures, and Mr. Smeeth worked them out again, for his benefit. The order book was referred to several times. But there was no escaping from those totals.

“I’ve just been working out how we stand, too, Mr. Dersingham. I thought you’d want to know now. This is the position, counting everything in.”

They went over that now, spending about half an hour in what was mostly futile discussion, as Mr. Smeeth, sick at heart, knew only too well.

“It’s no good, Smeeth,” the other said finally, “there’s no getting away from it. It was a tight squeeze paying that swine all that commission in advance, and now we’ve got to sell every square foot of stuff at a loss, on all those orders.”

“It’s a terrible loss. The business as it is will never stand it, Mr. Dersingham.”

“I know that. And what’s left of the business, even supposing I could borrow enough to see me through this mess? Where should we be? Only back where we were before we began handling this stuff, before Golspie came, doing just about enough trade to pay expenses, and on top of that I’d be up to the neck in debt. I couldn’t carry on a month. I’ve borrowed as much as I can, and even if I could borrow any more, I wouldn’t--it’s only throwing money away. Honestly, Smeeth, how can I go on?”

Mr. Smeeth looked through the papers again, though there was no real meaning in the glances he gave them. He was trying to think of a way out, but it was impossible to find one.

“What are you going to do, then, Mr. Dersingham?” he asked, miserably.

“Nothing. Finish. What else can I do? I’ll buy what I can of this lot, deliver it, and then finish. And if they bankrupt the firm, they bankrupt it, and there’s the end of it. If they don’t, I close down and clear out, anyhow, and that’s the end of it, too. I don’t suppose it’s the first time a dam’ fool’s been robbed clean out of a business, is it?”

“I don’t know what to say, Mr. Dersingham.” And Mr. Smeeth didn’t. He was staring at the opposite wall in utter dejection.

“What’s the good of saying anything? But what makes me sick is the way that rotter Golspie has cleared out----”

“I thought at the time it was a bit fishy, sir, when he wanted all that commission in advance.”

“Well, if you thought so, why the devil didn’t you say so at the time. No good saying so now.”

“I did say something at the time, Mr. Dersingham, I did really.”