Part 7

“No, I didn’t,” said Mr. Smeeth slowly. “That’s all right, George. Only don’t take all night about it, that’s all. Oh!--there’s just another thing.” He hesitated a moment. “Somebody told me he’d seen you once or twice with that flash bookie chap--what’s his name?--y’know--Shandon. Well, you keep away from that chap, George. I don’t interfere--and you know I don’t--but that chap’s a wrong ’un, and I don’t want to see a boy of mine in his company.”

“Shandon’s no friend of mine,” said George, flushing. “I don’t knock about with him. He comes into the garage sometimes, that’s all. He’s a friend of Barrett’s.”

“Well, if half of what I hear’s true,” Mr. Smeeth remarked, “he’s a friend to nobody, that chap. And you just keep out of his way, George, see?”

“First I’ve heard of this,” said Mrs. Smeeth, looking severely at her son.

“All ri’, Dad,” George muttered, nodding. “So long, Ma.” And he was off.

Mrs. Smeeth promptly rushed the remaining dirty plates into the kitchen, and then returned, five minutes later, to find her husband looking at a battered copy of a detective story that had somehow found its way into the room. You could not say he was reading it. So far, he was merely glancing suspiciously at it. Mrs. Smeeth took up the evening paper, pecked at it here and there, then pottered about a minute or two, then turned on the wireless, which only let loose another patronising gentleman, switched it off, brought two socks and some darning wool from the top of the little bookcase, examined them with distaste, looked across at her husband, then said: “I can’t settle down to anything to-night, somehow. How d’you feel about a little walk round? We might look in at Fred’s for an hour. What d’you say? Oh no, I thought not--won’t stir, the old stick-in-the-mud. One of these days I’ll be finding a nice young man to take me to the pictures. Well, if you won’t stir, I will. I think I’ll just slip round to Mrs. Dalby’s for an hour. She asked me if I would.”

“You do,” said Mr. Smeeth. “I’m all right here.”

He lit his pipe again, made up the fire, and tried to settle down with the detective story, which at once hustled him into the library of the old Manor House, where the baronet’s body was waiting to be discovered. But he did not make much headway with it. Goath and Mr. Dersingham and this Golspie kept appearing in that library. Angel Pavement was just outside the old Manor House. So he put the book away and tried the wireless. This time the patronising gentlemen had all gone home, and in their place was a rich and adventurous flood of sound. It was not unfamiliar to Mr. Smeeth, and, after a pleasant tussle with his memory, he recognised it as something by Mendelssohn, an overture it was, a sea piece, either Whats-It’s Cave or Hebrides or something. Unlike his wife and children and most of his friends, Mr. Smeeth had a genuine, if unambitious, passion for music, and this was the kind of music he knew and liked best. He sank into his chair, and the sharp lines on his face softened as the music came swirling out of the little cone and there arrived with it the old mysterious enchantment of the ear. A phantom sea rolled about his chair: the room was filled with foam and salt air, the green glitter of the waves, the white flash and the crying of great sea birds. And Mr. Smeeth, a magically drowned man, worried no longer, and for a brief space was happy.

III

The next day Mr. Smeeth struggled out of sleep to find himself faced with one of those dark spouting mornings which burst over unhappy London like gigantic bombs filled with dirty water. At the first sign of the approach of one of these outrages, all clocks ought to be put back three hours, so that everybody might stay in bed until their fury is spent. There is no end to their malice. They sweep, lash, and machine-gun the streets with rain; they send up fountains of mud from every passing wheel; they contrive that fires shall not burn and water boil, that tea shall be lukewarm, bacon fat congealed, and warranted fresh eggs change in their very cups to mere eggs and dubious; they make the husband turn on the wife, the father on the child, and thus help to ruin all family life; and they lavishly sow all the ills that townsmen know, colds, indigestion, rheumatism, influenza, bronchitis, pneumonia, and are indeed the industrious hirelings of Death.

“Got your umbrella?” said Mrs. Smeeth. She had been out of bed over an hour, but somehow looked as if her real self was still there, as if this was a mysteriously wrapped wraith of herself she had projected downstairs. “Goo’-bye, then. You’ll have to run for it, Dad.”

Dad did not run for it, but he managed to trot down Chaucer Road and then along the neighbouring street, but after that he had a pain over his heart and was reduced to a sort of quick shamble. Before he reached the High Street and his tram, the bottom of his trousers were unpleasantly heavy, his boots (one of Mrs. Smeeth’s bargains and made of cardboard) gave out a squelching sound, and the newspaper he carried was being rapidly reconverted into its original pulp. The tram, its windows steaming and streaming, was more crowded than usual, of course, and carried its maximum cargo of wet clothes, the wearers of which were simply so many irritable ghosts. After enormous difficulty, Mr. Smeeth succeeded in filling and lighting his morning pipe of T. Benenden’s Own, and then--so stubborn is the spirit of man--succeeded in unfolding and examining his pulpy newspaper. Before he had reached the end of City Road, he had learned that the cost of a public school education was too high, that the night clubs on Broadway were not doing the business they had done, that a man in Birmingham had cut his wife’s throat, that students in Cairo were again on strike, that an old woman in Hammersmith had died of starvation, that a policeman in Suffolk had found six pound notes in the prisoner’s left sock, and that bubonic plague is conveyed to human beings by fleas from infected rats. And Angel Pavement, when he arrived there, looked as if it had been plucked, grey and dripping, from the bottom of an old cistern.

It was an unpleasant morning at the office. To begin with, the situation was more puzzling than ever. Once more, Mr. Dersingham did not appear, but telephoned about half past ten to say that he would not be there until late afternoon and would Mr. Smeeth “just carry on.” Goath did not reappear, and Mr. Smeeth felt sure now that he had vanished for ever. Then Miss Matfield was haughtier than usual, and very cross. Young Turgis, who had contrived to get wetter than anybody else on his way up to the office, went slouching about with a long pale face, and every now and then startled and intimidated everybody by sneezing explosively. Stanley, at odds with the weather, the world, and his present destiny, hung about and got in people’s way, and when told to get on with his work, pointed out, not very respectfully, that he hadn’t any work, and Mr. Smeeth did not find it easy to supply him with any. Several inquiries by telephone could not be properly answered, always an unsatisfactory state of affairs. Mr. Smeeth had sufficient routine work to carry him through the morning, but he felt queerly insecure, not at all happy with his books, his neat little figures, his pencil, rubber, blue ink and red ink, now that he no longer knew what was happening to the firm. It was like trying to post a ledger swinging above a dark gulf.

Lunch time found him at his usual teashop, sitting at a wet marble-topped table and waiting for his poached egg on toast and cup of coffee. The wet morning had perished outside, where there was even a faint gleam of sunshine, but it had found a haven in this teashop, which seemed to be four hours behind the weather in the street, for it was all damp and steaming. Mr. Smeeth was jammed into a corner with another regular patron, a man with a glass eye, bright blue and with such a fixed glare about it that the thing frightened you. Mr. Smeeth was sitting on the same side as the glass eye, and as the owner of it, who was busy eating two portions of baked beans on toast and drinking a glass of cold milk, never turned his head as he talked, the effect was disconcerting and rather horrible.

“Firm we’ve been doing business with,” said the man, disposing of a few beans that had quitted their toast, “has come a nasty cropper--a ve-ery nasty cropper. Claridge and Molton--d’you know ’em? Oh, very nasty.”

“Is that so?” said Mr. Smeeth politely, looking from his poached egg at the glaring blue eye and then looking away again. “Don’t think I know the firm.”

“No, well, you mightn’t,” the eye continued, as if it had its doubts about that, though. “But they’ve been a well-known house in the wholesale umbrella trade for donkeys’ years, specially for ribs, handles, and tips. I remember the time when they carried a line of ribs nobody else could touch--same with the tips. If you’d come to us ten years ago, or five years ago, or even three years ago, and said, ‘We can offer you a line in ribs and tips that’ll make Claridge and Molton look silly,’ if you’d said that, we’d have laughed at you.”

“No doubt,” said Mr. Smeeth, quite seriously.

“And up to eighteen months ago, I’d have told you that Claridge and Molton was one of the soundest concerns in the business. And look at ’em now. Properly in Queer Street. Absolutely down the river.”

Mr. Smeeth manfully faced the blue glare. “How d’you account for it?” he inquired, not out of mere politeness but because he really wanted to know.

“This milk doesn’t taste right this morning,” his neighbour remarked mournfully. “They’ve had it near something. I’m giving it a miss. What was that?” And here the eye turned balefully. “Oh, about Claridge and Molton. Well, young Molton’s the one that’s upset their little apple-cart. He took charge about a couple of years ago, then began staying away all day--likes his whisky, y’know--drew heavily on the firm--sacked their oldest man, old Johnny Fowler, for something and nothing. Probably tight at the time--young Molton, I mean, not Johnny Fowler--he never took a drop. And there you are! You can’t do it, y’know, you can’t do it. Can you?”

“No,” said Mr. Smeeth sadly, “you can’t.”

“Course you can’t,” the eye concluded. “Not nowadays. It’s all too keen, too much competition. You’ve got to watch yourself all the time. Isn’t that so? Eh, miss, miss! My check, miss. And, I say, what about this milk?”

Mr. Smeeth finished his coffee, mechanically filled and lit his pipe, then pushed his way out of the place. He felt miserable. For all he knew to the contrary, Mr. Dersingham might be following the example of this young Molton. Hadn’t Mr. Dersingham just started staying away from the office all day? Hadn’t he just sacked _their_ oldest man, Goath? As he moved slowly along, sometimes staring into the windows of shops that meant nothing to him, Mr. Smeeth found himself going over all the possible ways in which a firm might come a nasty cropper, arrive at Queer Street, go down the river, and they seemed so numerous, so inevitable, that he saw himself joining the wretched army of the hangers-on, the dispossessed, at any moment. And, at the corner of Chiswell Street, he gave a man twopence for a box of matches.

When he let himself quietly into the office, he heard loud voices, and thought for a moment that something exciting was happening. But then he caught the words.

“I shaddered him all down Victoria Park Road,” Stanley was saying triumphantly, “and he never knew.”

“Well, why should he?” Turgis demanded, contemptuously. “He didn’t know you were following him, you little chump.”

“I know he didn’t,” cried Stanley. “That’s it. That’s where shadderin’ comes in----”

“Well, shadowing can come out,” Mr. Smeeth announced. “And if you don’t get on with some work, my boy, you’ll be finding yourself shadowing down those steps. Come on, Turgis, you ought to know a bit better. Standing there talking a lot of nonsense!”

“I was telling him it was nonsense,” said Turgis, rather sullenly. “He’s got this shadowing on the brain. He goes following some chap for miles, and then because this chap doesn’t take any notice of him--he doesn’t know he’s there, of course, and doesn’t care, anyhow--he thinks he’s a little Sexton Blake.”

“No, I don’t,” said Stanley, wrinkling up his freckled face until it achieved a look of intense disgust.

“The best thing you can do, Stanley,” said Mr. Smeeth, sitting down at his desk, “is to drop these silly tricks. They’ll get you into trouble one of these days. Why don’t you do something sensible in your spare time? Get a hobby. Do a bit of fretwork or collect foreign stamps or butterflies or something like that.”

“Huh! Nobody does them things now. Out of date,” Stanley muttered.

“Well, work’s not out of date, not here, anyhow,” Mr. Smeeth retorted, in time-old schoolmaster fashion. “So just get on with a bit.”

Miss Matfield arrived, quarter of an hour late, as usual. “Don’t talk to me, anybody,” she commanded. “I’m furious. Of all the foul lunches I’ve ever had in this city, to-day’s was the foulest. It makes me sick to think about it. Look here, is Mr. Dersingham ever coming here again? It’s absurd--I’ve got umpteen things for him to sign. Can you do anything with them, Mr. Smeeth?”

“I’ll have a look at them, Miss Matfield,” said Mr. Smeeth wearily. The afternoon dragged on.

IV

At five o’clock, Mr. Dersingham arrived, bursting in like a large pink bomb. He was breathless, perspiring, and all smiles. “Afternoon, ev’rybody,” he gasped. “Is there a late spot of tea goin’? Doesn’t matter if there isn’t. I say, Miss Matfield, just drop ev’rything, will you, and bring your notebook to my room. I want to dictate some letters and a circular. Stanley, you get ready to copy the circular. And, Turgis, you ring up Brown and Gorstein and say I want to speak to Mr. Gorstein. And Smeeth, I shall want you when I’m through with these letters, about a quarter of an hour’s time, and will you bring that statement of the outstanding accounts right up to date and let me know all about Gorstein’s and Nickman’s payments this last year? Good man!”

Mr. Dersingham liked to signalise his arrival in this fashion--it looked as if he was starting the day for everybody, and it still looked like that even if he did it at five o’clock--but now there was a difference. His voice had a triumphant ring, in spite of the fact that he was short of breath. There was about his whole manner a Napoleonic abruptness and self-confidence. He presented the spectacle--rare enough too--of an Old Worrelian in big business. At one bound the temperature of the office rose about ten degrees, and Mr. Smeeth, as he investigated the firm’s somewhat melancholy relations with Brown & Gorstein and Nickman & Sons, was visited once more by quite wildly optimistic fancies. Undoubtedly, something had happened.

When at last he was called into Mr. Dersingham’s room, he soon learned what it was that had happened. It was, as he had suspected more than once, this Mr. Golspie.

“And the position is this, Smeeth,” Mr. Dersingham continued. “He’s got the sole agency for all this new Baltic stuff. They won’t sell it to anybody here but Golspie. It’s good wood, all of it, quite up to standard, and he can get it at prices, thirty, forty and fifty per cent. lower than we’ve been paying. I don’t mind telling you that when he first explained what he was after, I wasn’t keen at all, not a bit keen. It sounded fishy to me.”

“Does seem a bit queer he should come along like that, doesn’t it, sir?”

“It does, Smeeth, and that’s what I thought. But we’ve been going round with some of his samples at prices we could sell the stuff at on his figures, and they’ve been absolutely leaping at them. We can cut everybody out, absolutely clean cut. We can do more business, Smeeth, with this new stuff in a fortnight than the firm’s ever done, even in its best days, in a month. And you know what business we’ve been doing lately? Awful! A ghastly show! By the way, Smeeth, Goath was partly to blame for that. Oh yes, he was. Thirty years in the trade and all that--but the fact is, they were all tired of seeing his depressing old mug, and he’d given up trying. Golspie soon showed me that, though I must say I’d had my suspicions for some time.”

“So had I, sir.”

“Exactly! Goath had to be booted out, and as it was he booted himself out. He’ll be feeling very sorry for himself soon. Now then, this is what’s happening. Golspie came along here to see me quite by chance. He’d got this contract, but he wanted some firm already in the trade to join up with. All this is--er--in--y’know--between ourselves, Smeeth.”

“I understand, sir,” said Mr. Smeeth, flattered and delighted.

“Golspie--Mr. Golspie--doesn’t want a partnership, can’t be bothered with it. He’s coming in here as a sort of general manager, working on a jolly good commission. You’ll have to know all about that, of course, because of the books. It’s a hefty commission all right, but then he’s bringing all the business really, and he’ll be responsible for getting the wood over and all that side of it. And the two of us will be working together, running things here. I’ll go out a good deal myself for the next few months, and we’ll have to get some fellow--somebody young and keen--to take Goath’s place.”

“You won’t be cutting down the office staff then?” said Mr. Smeeth, greatly relieved.

“Cutting it down! We’ll have to jolly well increase it, and quickly too. That far sample room will have to be cleared out and tidied up this week, we shall want that. You’d better get another typist to help Miss Matfield--a young girl will do--as soon as possible. This next week or two, Smeeth,” and here Mr. Dersingham sprang up and clenched his fists, just as if he had never seen a decent public school, “we’ve got to drive it hard, go all out, and I’m depending on you for the office side of it. You people have got to stand behind me in this. It’s a great chance for all of us, and, of course, a tremendous stroke of luck, Golspie’s coming here. He’s going all out himself on this--he’s that sort of chap, very keen and all that--and we’ve got to keep pace.”

“You can count on me doing my best, Mr. Dersingham,” Mr. Smeeth assured him fervently. “There’s one or two things I’d like to know about, of course. F’r’instance, what’s his arrangement with these foreign people of his about payments?”

“He’s going to talk to you about that, Smeeth. We’ve only just touched on that, so far.”

“And another thing, sir,” Mr. Smeeth continued, more hesitantly now. “You know how we stand at the bank just now. If we’re branching out, we’ve got to have something behind us there.”

“I’ve been looking into that this afternoon,” said Mr. Dersingham. “We can’t do anything more with the bank at present, but I think I can borrow a bit to see us through. We’ve got to have something to jolly well play with, this next month or so, particularly as Mr. Golspie talks about wanting some of his commission in advance, so to speak.”

Mr. Smeeth looked grave, then coughed. “Do you think that would be wise, Mr. Dersingham? I mean--er--after all, you’ve no guarantee----”

“You mean--the whole thing may be just a swindle. Come on, isn’t that it?” cried the other, grinning. “Well of course I thought of that. I thought of God knows how many swindles yesterday morning, because, as I said, the whole thing seemed fishy to me, and, between ourselves, I thought Golspie himself a terrible outsider at first. But I’ve gone into all that. He doesn’t draw his commission until the stuff has been delivered to our people, of course, but he wants his money then, without waiting until the account’s finally settled. Though, by the way, Smeeth, we’re not going to give these fellows so much rope in future. With this new stuff on our hands, we can afford to tighten it up a bit, don’t you think?”

“That’s so, Mr. Dersingham. I’d like to see one or two of these accounts closed altogether. They’re more bother than they’re worth,” Mr. Smeeth hesitated. “I’m not quite clear yet about this Mr. Golspie, sir. Is he going to be in charge of the office?”

“In a way, yes,” the other replied, with the air of a man who had given this question a great deal of thought. “You can take it, he is. Though of course it’s still my show----”

“Of course, Mr. Dersingham.”

“Suppose, by any chance, you disagree violently with anything he suggests, you’ll come to me,” said Mr. Dersingham, looking at that moment like a large pink conspirator. “But you needn’t tell that to the other people out there.”

“I see what you mean, sir,” said Mr. Smeeth, who felt that he would see in time.

“Mr. Golspie has a good deal to learn, of course,” Mr. Dersingham continued, airily. “He doesn’t know the trade, and he doesn’t know the City. But--he seems to have knocked up and down all over the place in his time, and he’s got ideas, y’know, and colossal push. Rum sort of chap, I must say.” Then he became business-like again. “Now look here, Smeeth, I want to push off as soon as I can because I want that money--or some of it--into the bank by to-morrow afternoon. Ask Miss Matfield to hurry up with those letters so that I can sign ’em. And just see those circulars get away to-night, will you?”

“I will, Mr. Dersingham.” And Mr. Smeeth turned away, but stopped before he reached the door. “And if you don’t mind me saying so, sir, I’m very pleased things are looking up like this. I was beginning to feel worried, very worried, sir.”

“Thanks, Smeeth! Good man!” You could not mistake the Old Worrelian now. “Things will be humming here soon, you’ll see. Colossal luck, of course, his turning up like this! Oh, by the way, he’s probably coming in soon.”

Mr. Golspie did come in, but only after Mr. Dersingham had gone and for about half an hour or so, during which he merely asked Mr. Smeeth a few questions. He came again the next morning, and Mr. Smeeth had to join him and Mr. Dersingham in a little conference. Mr. Golspie then returned about half past four, dictated some letters, nosed about the office, examined the far room, and did some telephoning at Mr. Dersingham’s table, Mr. Dersingham himself being out visiting Nickman and Sons. The others had gone, and Mr. Smeeth was putting away his books for the night, when Mr. Golspie came out of the private office and began asking more questions, chiefly about accounts. The two of them stayed there another twenty-five minutes, at the end of which Mr. Golspie suggested they should round off the proceedings by having a drink.

When they were at the bottom of the stairs, Mr. Smeeth remembered that he was nearly out of tobacco (he smoked two and a half ounces of T. Benenden’s Own Mixture every week) and said he would slip in for some. Mr. Golspie followed him in, and T. Benenden was so surprised to see this massive and large-moustached stranger again, in company with Mr. Smeeth this time, too, that he weighed out the tobacco and put it in the pouch without saying a word.

“You got any good cigars, _good_ cigars?” Mr. Golspie demanded in his resonant bass, at the same time staring hard, even harder than the tobacconist had stared at him.

“Certainly, I have,” replied T. Benenden with dignity. And he produced two or three boxes.

Mr. Golspie chose two cigars, cut them, then popped one into his own mouth, stuck the other into Mr. Smeeth’s, and lit the pair of then, without a word. Then, after blowing a stream of smoke at Benenden, he said: “How much?”

“Three shillings, for the two.”

Mr. Golspie slapped down two half-crowns on the counter. This was the tobacconist’s opportunity.

“What about this big Cement slump, gentlemen?” he began. “Where’s that going to land us----?”

“It’s not going to land me anywhere,” said Mr. Golspie. “Where’s it going to land you?”