During the first six months of our speculative ventures we lost fan more than we gained. John at last woke up to the fact that if we went on this way we should lose everything. After hearing of a particularly devastating disaster he indulged in a memorable outburst. “Blast!” he said. “It means I must take this damned dull game much more seriously. And there’s so much else to be done just now, far more important in the long run. I see it may be as difficult for me to beat Hom. sap. at this game as it is for Hom. sap. to beat apes at acrobatics. The human body is not equipped for the jungle, and my mind may not be equipped for the jungle of individualistic finance. But I’ll get round it somehow, just as Hom. sap. got round acrobatics.”
It was characteristic of John that when he had made a serious mistake through lack of experience he never tried to conceal the fact. On this occasion he recounted with complete detachment, neither blaming nor excusing himself, how he, the intellectual superior of all men, had been tricked by a common swindler. One of his financial acquaintances had evidently guessed that the boy’s interest in speculation had ulterior sources, in fact that some adult with money to invest was using him as a spy. This individual proceeded to treat John extremely well, and to “prattle to him about his ventures,” anxiously pledging him to secrecy. In this way Homo superior was completely diddled by Homo sapiens. John insisted that I should put large sums of money into concerns which his friend had advocated. At first I refused; but John was blandly confident in his alleged “inside information that it’s an absolute scoop,” and finally I consented. I need not recount the history of these disastrous speculations. Suffice it that we lost everything that we had risked, and that John’s friend disappeared.
For some time after this disaster we refrained from speculation. John spent a good deal of his time away from home and away from his workshop also. When I asked what he had been up to, he usually said, “studying finance,” but refused any further information. During this period his health began to deteriorate. His digestion, always his weakest spot, gave him some trouble, and he complained of headaches. Evidently he was leading a rather unwholesome life.
He began to spend many of his nights away from home. His father had relatives in London, and increasingly often John was allowed to visit them. But the relatives did not for long tolerate his independence. (He disappeared every morning and returned late at night or not till the next day, and refused to give an account of his actions.) Consequently these visits had to cease. But John, meanwhile, had learnt that, in summer, he could live the life of a stray cat in the Metropolis, in spite of the police. To his parents he said that he knew “a man who had a flat who would let him sleep there any night.” Actually, as I learned much later, he used to sleep in parks and under bridges.
I learned also how he had occupied himself. By a series of tricks of the “gate-crashing” type he had managed to make contacts with several big financiers in London, and had set about captivating and amusing them, and unobtrusively picking their brains, before they sent him by car with a covering note to his indignant relatives, or paid his railway fare home to the North, and sent the letter by post.
Here is a specimen, one of many such documents which caused much perturbation to Doc and Pax.
DEAR SIR.
Your small son’s bicycle tour came to an untimely end yesterday evening owing to a collision with my car near Guildford. He fully admits that the fault was his own. He is unhurt, but the bicycle is past repair. As it was late, I took him to my home for the night. I congratulate you on having a very remarkable boy whose precocious passion for finance was extremely entertaining to my party. My chauffeur will put him on the 10.26 at Euston this morning. I am telegraphing you to that effect.
Yours faithfully.
(Signed by a personage whose name I had better not divulge.)
John’s parents, and I also, knew that he was on a bicycling tour, but we supposed him to have gone into North Wales. The fact that he had been so soon encountered in Surrey proved that he must have taken his bicycle by train. Needless to say, John did not turn up by the 10.26 from Euston. He gave the chauffeur the slip, poor man, by jumping out of the car in a traffic jam. That night he spent as the guest of another financier. If I remember rightly, he arrived in the late afternoon at the front door with a story that he and his mother were staying somewhere near, and that he had lost his way and forgotten the address. As police inquiries failed to discover his mother in the neighbourhood, he was kept for the night, and then for the following night, in fact for the Saturday and Sunday. I have no doubt that he made good use of the time. On Monday morning, when the great man had gone to business, he disappeared.
After some months spent partly on such adventures, partly on close study of the literature of finance and political economy and social changes, John felt himself ready to take action once more. He knew that I was likely to be sceptical of his plans, so he operated with money standing in his own name, and told me nothing until, six months later, he was able to show me the results in the shape of a considerable sum standing to his credit.
As time passed it became clear that he had mastered financial speculation as effectively as he had mastered mathematics. I have no knowledge of the principles on which he went to work, for henceforth I played no part in his business deals, save occasionally as his agent when a personal interview was to be undertaken. I remember his saying once when we were reviewing our position, “After all there’s not much in this speculation game, once you know your facts and get the hang of the way money trickles about the world. Of course there’s a frightful lot of mere flukiness about it. You can never be quite sure which way the cat will jump. But if you know your cat well (Hom. sap. I mean), and if you know the ground well, you can’t go far wrong in the long run.”
By the use of his new technique John gradually, throughout the earlier part of his adolescence, amassed a very imposing fortune, much of which was legally owned by me. It may seem strange that he never told his parents about his wealth until the time came for him to use it on a lavish scale. “I don’t want to upset their lives sooner than I need,” he said, “and I don’t want to give them the worry of trying not to blab.” On the other hand he allowed them to know that I had come in for a lot of money (supposed to be entirely due to luck on the Stock Exchange), and he was glad that I should help his parents in a number of w’avs, such as paving for the education of his brother and sister, and taking them all (John included) on foreign holidays. The parental gratitude. I may say, was extremely embarrassing. John made it more so by joining unctuously in the chorus, and dubbing me “The Benefactor,” which title he soon shortened aggravatingly to “The Benny,” and subsequently changed to “The Bean.”
CHAPTER VIII
SCANDALOUS ADOLESCENCE
ALTHOUGH during a large part of his fourteenth year finance constituted John’s main occupation, his attention was never wholly absorbed by it; and after his period of intensive study and speculation he was able to continue the business of gaining monetary power while giving the best of his energies to very different matters. He was increasingly intrigued by the new experiences consequent on adolescence. At the same time he was very seriously engaged on the study of the potentialities and limitations of Homo sapiens as manifested in contemporary world-problems. And as his opinion of the normal species became more and more unflattering, he began to turn his attention to the search for other individuals of his own calibre. Though all these activities were pursued together, it will be convenient to deal with them separately.