Roy went quickly by, missing me in the crowd. I caught him by the arm. He turned and his face was serious and excited.
‘Well?’ I said.
‘They’re inquiring into some of George’s and Jack’s business. They questioned them this afternoon — and took away the accounts and books.’
It sounded inevitable as I heard it. It sounded unlike news, it seemed something I had known for a long time.
‘I couldn’t say it on the telephone,’ Roy was talking fast, ‘my parents were too near.’
We went into the refreshment-room on the platform. Roy’s tumbler of whisky rattled in his fingers on the marble table, as he described the last few hours. Morcom heard from Jack, saw Roy immediately and insisted that he let me know. Then Roy called at George’s office, a few minutes before he telephoned to me. George had said: ‘Yes, they’ve had the effrontery to ask me questions,’ and stormed.
‘He was afraid though,’ said Roy. ‘He was anxious to prove that they parted on civil terms.’
‘Morcom didn’t know the best thing to do,’ he said. ‘He had no idea of the legal side. So you had to be fetched.’
‘I’d better see George at once,’ I said.
‘I’ve arranged for him to meet you in my study,’ said Roy. ‘It’s quicker than his lodgings.’
Actually, George’s rooms were nearer. It was a strange trick for Roy to fix this meeting in his father’s house. Yet he was as concerned as I.
His study reminded me that he was the only son of a prosperous family. It was a room more luxurious than one expected to find in the town: and then, again unexpectedly, the bookshelves of this spoilt young man were packed with school and college prizes. I was looking at them when George entered. He came from the door and shook hands with a smile that, on the moment, surprised me with its cordiality, its show of pleasure.
When the smile faded, however, the corners of his mouth were pulled down. Our range of expression is small, so that a smile in genuine pleasure photographs indistinguishably from a grimace of pain; they are the same unless we know their history and their future.
‘This is an unpleasant business,’ he said.
‘Yes. But still—’
‘One’s got to expect attacks. Of course,’ George said, ‘this happens to be particularly monstrous.’
Roy made an excuse, and left us.
‘We ought to go into it,’ I said. I added: ‘We don’t want to leave anything to chance. Don’t you think?’
‘It’s got to be stopped.’
‘Yes. Can’t you tell me what they wanted? It’d be useful to both of us.’
George sat down by the writing-desk. His fingers pushed tobacco into his pipe, and his eyes gazed across the room.
‘It’s absurd we should have to waste our time,’ he said in an angry tone. ‘Well, we may as well get it over. I’ll organise the facts as we go along.’ He began to speak more slowly than usual, emphasising the words, his tone matter-of-fact and yet deliberate with care.
‘Jack Cotery made a suggestion over four years ago—’ George thought for a second and produced the year and then the month. ‘He’d been considering the advertising firm that Martineau went into. He produced some evidence that if it were run more efficiently it could be made to pay. There was a minor advertising paper attached, you remember, called the Arrow. I talked to Martineau when he came back to clear up his affairs. That was the summer of 1928. The paper reached a fairly wide public; some thousands, he convinced me of that. Jack’s case was — that if we could raise the money and buy Exell out, we could pay interest on the loan and make an adequate profit. I saw nothing against it — I see nothing to make me change my view’ — George suddenly burst out — ‘I can’t be expected to live on a few pounds a week and not look round for money if I can get it without sacrificing important things. You know well enough that nothing’s ever made me take money seriously. I’ve never given much attention to it. I’ve never made any concessions for the sake of money. But I’m not an anchorite, there are things I could buy if I had money, and I’m not going to apologise for taking chances when they meant no effort and no interruption to my real activities.’
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘I’m glad you accept that,’ George said as his voice quietened. I knew that, at moments, I or anyone must be numbered with the accusers now; it was strange to feel how he was obliged to justify the most ordinary contact with the earth. ‘So on that basis I was ready to co-operate. Naturally, I hadn’t any capital of my own. I was able to contribute about fifty pounds, chiefly by readjusting all my debts. Anyway, my function was to audit the accountancy side, and see how good a property it was—’
‘You did that?’ I said.
‘There wasn’t much evidence, which isn’t surprising when you think of the two partners. There were a few books kept incompetently by Exell and the statement by Martineau. The statement was pretty definite, and so we considered it and proceeded to action. Olive raised a little. Her father wasn’t dead then, so she couldn’t do much. By the way, you might as well understand that this business has been consistently profitable. On a small scale naturally, but still it’s brought in a pleasant addition to my income. And we met all our obligations. Even in the worst weeks when our patriotic or national government was doing its best to safeguard the liberties of the British people.’
The habitual sarcasm left him, after months of use, as easily and unthinkingly as a ‘Good morning’.
‘I had very little to do with the financial backing. Jack undertook the whole responsibility for raising that. I should have been completely useless at getting businessmen to part with their money, of course—’ He gave a quick, slightly abject smile. ‘On the other hand, I can produce their names and the details of the contracts that Jack made with them. We didn’t consider it necessary to form a company; he simply borrowed a number of separate sums from various people, and made definite terms about paying them for the risk.’
‘They lent it on the security of the firm, I suppose,’ I said.
‘Yes. It was a series of private loans for a purpose which everyone understood. It’s the sort of arrangement which is made every day. The man who was here this afternoon,’ he said, ‘pestered me for an hour about the details. Incidentally he was unnecessarily offensive to me. That was before he came to the other scheme. It was a long time before I could make him understand they were slightly different. The position was’ — he shifted in his chair — ‘that Jack produced another idea when Olive’s father died. That meant she had a little surplus capital — I mentioned it to you when I saw you last — and it was easy to see modifications in the technique. We’d acquired a little money and a certain amount of experience. So it was possible to think of something on a larger scale. Particularly in the special circumstances of my having a crowd of people that needed to be together. The idea was to buy the farm and one or two other places; then we could use the farm itself for our own purposes. There was no reason why the money we spent shouldn’t come back to ourselves in part — and when we weren’t using the place, we could let it out as a youth hostel or whatever people call them who haven’t the faintest idea of helping people to enjoy their youth.’
‘So you did it?’
‘Yes. Jack and Olive were in it. I couldn’t appear — but it was understood that I was to advise.’
‘Jack brought in the money again?’