Part 31 (1/2)
”If there was one thing which more than another tempted me to refuse you every sc.r.a.p of a.s.sistance it was the conclusion I arrived at,” said Geoffrey. ”However, I'll try to keep faith with the dead man, and Heaven send me sense sufficient to steer clear of difficulties.”
”I can trust your honesty any way,” remarked Halliday. ”There's a heavy load off my mind at last. You are a good fellow, Geoffrey, and, excuse the frankness, even in questions beyond your usual scope not so simple as you sometimes look.”
A day or two before this conversation took place, Henry Leslie, sitting at his writing-table in the villa above the inlet, laid down his pen and looked up gratefully at his wife, who placed a strip of stamped paper before him. Millicent both smiled and frowned as she noticed how greedily his fingers fastened upon it.
”It is really very good of you. You don't know how much this draft means to me,” he said. ”I wish I needn't take it, but I am forced to.
It's practically the whole of the first dole your skinflint trustee made you, isn't it?”
”It is a large share,” was the answer. ”Almost a year's allowance, and I'm going to pay off our most pressing debts with the rest. But I am glad to give it to you, Harry, and we must try to be better friends, and keep on the safe side after this.”
”I hope we shall,” replied the man, who was touched for once. ”It's tolerably hard for folks like us, who must go when the devil drives, to be virtuous, but I got hold of a few mining shares, which promise to pay well now, for almost nothing; and if they turn up trumps, I'd feel greatly tempted to throw over the Company and start afresh.”
He hurriedly scribbled a little note, and Millicent turned away with a smile that was not far from a sigh. She had returned from England in a repentant mood, and her husband, whose affairs had gone smoothly, was almost considerate, so that, following a reconciliation, there were times when she cherished an uncertain hope that they might struggle back to their former level. It was on one of the occasions when their relations were not altogether inharmonious that she had promised to give him a draft to redeem the loan Director Shackleby held like a whip lash over him. Had Leslie been a bolder man, it is possible that his wife's aspirations might have been realized, for Millicent was not impervious to good influences.
Unfortunately for her, however, a free-spoken man called Shackleby, who said that he had been sent by his colleagues who managed the Industrial Enterprise Company, called upon Thurston and Savine together in their city offices. He came straight to the point after the fas.h.i.+on of Western business men.
”Julius Savine has rather too big a stake in the Orchard Valley for any one man,” he said. ”It's ancient history that if, as usual with such concerns as ours, we hadn't been a day or two too slow, we would have held the concessions instead of him. Neither need I tell you about the mineral indications in both the reefs and alluvial. Now we saw our way to rake a good many dollars out of that valley, but when Savine got in ahead we just sat tight and watched him, ready to act if he found the undertaking too big for him. It seems to me that has happened, which explains my visit to-day. We might be open to buy some of those conditional lands from you.”
”They may never be ours to sell, though I hope for the contrary,”
Geoffrey replied.
”Exactly,” said the other. ”That is why we're only ready to offer you out-district virgin forest value for the portions colored blue in this plan. In other words, we speculate by advancing you money on very uncertain security.”
Geoffrey laughed after a glance at the plan. ”You have a pretty taste!
After giving you all the best for a t.i.the of its future value, where do we come in?”
”On the rest,” declared Shackleby, coolly. ”We would pay down the money now, and advance you enough on interest to place you beyond all risks in completing operations. Though you might get more for the land, without this a.s.sistance, you might get nothing, and it will be a pretty heavy check. I suppose I needn't say it was not until lately that we decided to meet you this way.”
”By your leave!” broke in Thomas Savine, who had been scribbling figures on a sc.r.a.p of paper, which he pa.s.sed to Geoffrey. It bore a few lines scrawled across the foot of it: ”Value absurdly low, but it might be a good way to hedge against total loss, and we could level up the average on the rest. What do you think?”
Geoffrey grasped a pen, and the paper went back with the brief answer, ”That it would be a willful sacrifice of Miss Savine's future.”
”Suppose we refuse?” he asked, and Shackleby stroked his mustache meditatively before he made answer:
”Don't you think that would be foolish? You see, we were not unanimous by a long way on this policy, and several of our leaders agree with me that we had better stick to our former one. It's a big scheme, and accidents will happen, however careful one may be. Then there's the risk of new conditions being imposed upon you by the authorities.
Besides, you have a time limit to finish in, and mightn't do it, especially without the a.s.sistance we could in several ways render you.
You can't have a great many dollars left either--see?”
”I do,” said Geoffrey, with an ominous glitter in his eyes. ”You needn't speak more plainly. Accidents, no doubt of the kind you refer to, have happened already. They have not, however, stopped us yet, and are not going to. I, of course, appreciate your delicate reference to your former policy; I conclude it was your policy individually. I don't like threats, even veiled ones, and n.o.body ever succeeded in coercing me. Accordingly, when we have drained it, we'll sell you all the land you want at its market value. You can't have an acre at anything like the price you offer now.”
”That's your ultimatum. Yes? Then I'm only wasting time, and hope you won't be sorry,” returned Shackleby. When he went out Geoffrey turned to Thomas Savine.
”A declared enemy is preferable to a treacherous ally,” he observed dryly. ”That man would never have kept faith with us.”
”I don't know,” was the answer. ”Of course, he's crooked, but he has his qualities. Anyway, I'd sooner trust him than the invertebrate crawler, Leslie.”
A day or two later Shackleby called upon Leslie in his offices and with evident surprise received the check Millicent had given to her husband.
”I wasn't in any hurry. Have some of your t.i.tled relatives in the old country left you a fortune?” he inquired ironically.