A Modern Tragedy (25 page)

“Very well, Mr. Tasker, I will hear the details of your scheme. But I warn you, my consent to hear does not necessarily mean I shall approve it.”

“This is only an informal meeting, Mr. Crosland, after all,” said Tasker meekly.

Mr. Crosland gravely bowed agreement, and re-seated himself in his chair. There was a general feeling of relief, a relaxation of tension; chairs were drawn up briskly to the table, and fresh cigarettes lighted.

“Now let's get down to it,” said one creditor. “We've been walking up the garden before. Statement of assets and liabilities.”

Tasker, whose spirits seemed quite recovered, stood up, and going to the drawer Walter had previously seen him open, took out some papers. “Here you are,” he said: “I've had it all set out. There are plenty of copies.”

He began to pass typewritten sheets down the table.

“Oh, Walter!” He summoned the young man to his side with a jerk of the head, and muttered quietly in his ear: “Just persuade Mr. Crosland to have a drink, will you? He looks upset.”

Walter gave Elaine's grandfather an anxious glance, and noted that he did, indeed, betray his years. He mixed a weak
whisky and water and offered it to Mr. Crosland, who, reflecting that he could hardly refuse to drink with a man with whom he was considering going into business—for if the flotation went through he himself would inevitably have a large interest in it—accepted the glass from Walter's hand.

Walter then again caught Tasker's eye, which directed him to the window curtain; a shaft of light would very soon fall on Mr. Crosland's chair. Walter obediently adjusted the curtain, looking out as he did so on the bright sunlit garden with wistful longing.

The varnished summer house had been turned round in accordance with the movement of the sun, and Mrs. Tasker was sitting there in a low chair, reading a magazine. Walter was really astonished to find somebody peacefully existing outside this room, which was stifling with the heat of human passions. He seemed to have spent his whole life here, and each smallest detail of its shape and furnishing was printed on his mind for ever. He turned back reluctantly to the table.

The men were all studying the papers Tasker had handed them, intently, and making comments; Walter perceived that they all had a surprised and hopeful air. He sat down in his former place. His chair was in the background, a little withdrawn from the table, and no papers seemed to have been placed at hand for him. He tried to catch Tasker's eye to have this remedied, but was unsuccessful, and supposed he must wait for a sight of the statement till his betters had finished with it.

And suddenly a tiny doubt crept into his mind. There was no copy of the statement for him—he could not see a spare one lying anywhere about. Tasker had sent him from the table—oh, on a very natural errand; still, he had sent him—at the very instant when the statement was being circulated. Could there, by any chance, be something in the
statement which Tasker did not wish him to see? He tried to dismiss the notion as absurd, and not only absurd but utterly impracticable; it still persisted. At any rate it was easy to prove its untruth, thought Walter, angry with himself for such base and childish suspicions; he had only to glance over his neighbour's shoulder, and he would see. He quietly moved his chair, and did so. The man, seeing his purpose, held the clipped sheets near for him to gain a better view. The assets of Messrs. Tasker 1925 lay open to his eyes.

The first point which struck Walter was the number of subsidiary businesses involved. Walter was amazed and humbled; he saw the unimportance of himself, of Heights, compared with Tasker and his large schemes. No wonder Tasker was always so busy, rushing here and there to keep appointments, telephoning and being telephoned; no wonder he was brusque and peremptory when things at Heights did not quite go as they should. Indeed Walter marvelled that Tasker had condescended to spend even so much time on him as he had. Walter's eyes then naturally sought the item in which he was personally interested: the name of Heights, and its valuation. With a little quiver of the nerves, for Heights was very dear to him, he found it. He started, bent over the paper more closely, withdrew it altogether from his neighbour's grasp and held it up to his eyes, traced the line of the typing with his fingers. He could not believe that he indeed saw what he thought he saw. There must be some mistake!

For the Heights Mill business was set down as worth forty thousand pounds.

And suddenly Walter saw through the whole colossal swindle. He knew, without any further investigation, that several other items on the assets side were, like Heights, quadrupled in value. He didn't know which they were, but Tasker certainly, and Dollam perhaps, knew—the afternoon
might have been a drama for Dollam too. He saw that Tasker had had this in mind from the first; that he had secured the Heights business from the Dollams by some equally vile piece of trickery which he was now repaying; that he had needed an honest man of straw to start the place, to make it a going concern showing a paper profit, to sell it to Messrs. Tasker, and to be sufficiently inexperienced to accept payment for it in Tasker's shares, which Tasker had even then known to be worthless.

(He remembered here that Tasker had paid him in two instalments, so that the first receipt he had given for the main bulk of the sum, contained the words “On account”—that might be useful to Tasker as backing his bluff if the valuation were questioned.)

The five hundred pounds which Walter had advanced had been used, in fact, to pay his own salary, and no longer existed; the deeds of Heights Mills had, doubtless, been deposited at the bank as security against the wages. Thus without finding a penny of ready money, Tasker had contrived to put himself in possession of a going concern which could be made to look worth forty thousand pounds on paper. Tasker had paid Walter in worthless Tasker 1925 shares; and so now if Walter spoke up honestly—as of course he meant to do—about the value of Heights, he would ruin himself by his own act. For if Walter questioned the right valuation of one of these businesses—one, too, of which he had indubitable knowledge—the meeting would, naturally (and rightly) suspect them all, the flotation scheme would be postponed for investigation, or perhaps at once totally rejected. Walter could not imagine Henry Clay Crosland, for example, embarking on a company flotation with a man who falsified his assets. No! If he spoke out now about the true value of Heights, which was worth, Walter thought now, in his wider experience, eight or ten thousand pounds at the
very outside—if he spoke out now honestly about the value of Heights—as of course he meant to do—ah, God! If he spoke out now honestly about the value of Heights, all those fears in whose dread shadow he had anguished for the past few weeks would become dire realities. He would lose his work, his money, his car, his new power of care-free spending, his father's investments; he could make no contribution to his home; he might even be obliged to live on Rosamond; he would be associated in all men's minds with that shady bankruptcy of Leonard Tasker's; he would lose all that made life worth living; he would lose Elaine. Elaine! Elaine!

“I suppose we can rely on these figures, Mr. Tasker?” Henry Clay Crosland observed. Though his question was blunt, his tone was polite and encouraging, for he felt he had done the man a wrong. The statement he held in his hand revealed that Tasker had plenty of capital; his difficulty was merely that, like the capital of a great many other people in industry at the moment, it was “frozen,” tied up in assets valuable as they stood but unrealisable save at a terrible loss—buildings, goodwill, machinery.

“Every figure there is the valuer's, Mr. Crosland,” replied Tasker indifferently. “I have the signed statement here.” He passed a further set of papers down the table.

At this Walter looked up with hope renewed. Perhaps Heights really was worth so much, then, after all! But he found Tasker's blue eyes fixed upon him in a hard, cruel stare. Walter blenched. Oh, there was no mistake about it! Tasker knew as well as he did, probably better, that Heights was over-valued. The accountant was his creature, or perhaps his dupe, like Walter; the falsification was deliberate; and if Walter did not speak out at once honestly about Heights, he would be a party to the fraud.

Elaine, Elaine!

There was a long, awful moment of suspense, during which
Tasker's light eyes stared at him unwinkingly. Walter perceived the man's astuteness, in leaving him to make the discovery now, at a moment when he had to decide a course of conduct instantly, in public, in circumstances of confusion; without opportunity for discussion accuse his employer of a serious crime or risk becoming a party to it; speak out now or for ever hold his peace. (That was the marriage service, thought Walter childishly; ah, Elaine!) If he did not speak out he was a party to the fraud, and could not accuse Tasker later without also accusing himself. If he did speak out, Tasker would be sure to discredit his statement somehow—after all, Tasker had been his partner, originally, at Heights, and could easily pretend he had put in unconscionable sums. Walter, remembering that first confused interview at the Leeds bank, knew he couldn't contradict him. But all that made no difference to the moral aspect of the affair, and Walter knew it perfectly; Heights was not worth that amount; he ought to speak out now, question the valuation. But Elaine! His father's investments! Quick, quick! He must decide! Walter's scalp pricked, his heart seemed to stop beating, the blood froze in his veins. “Death must be like this!” thought Walter, gasping. Then the moment was over; he had thrown the typewritten sheets down on the table, and held his tongue.

Tasker withdrew his snake's stare, and smiled at the young man kindly.

Within five minutes it was plain that the proposed flotation was favourably viewed by the meeting; within half an hour it was decided. The principal creditors of the present company were to be recompensed by blocks of the new shares. The properties of Messrs. Tasker 1925, which was to go into voluntary liquidation, were to become the property of the new firm, Tasker taking in exchange a large (very large, Walter thought) block of the new shares. Tasker was to be
governing director, Walter and Henry Clay Crosland on the board of the new company, which was to bear the title of Tasker, Haigh and Company.

All this needed confirmation by a formal meeting, and depended, naturally, upon the public response to the flotation; but with Henry Clay Crosland's backing, his name on the prospectus, success was almost sure.

Walter listened to all this with a madly beating heart, while his subconscious mind rapidly pumped up phrases, pictures, emotions, justifying his deed. His future was assured, thought the young man, almost sobbing with relief; the slump would end, Messrs. Tasker, Haigh and Company would be a highly profitable investment; he could soon replace the worthless 1925 Tasker shares at present in his father's safe-deposit with the valuable new ones; he would, of course, remain at the head of Heights. What did it matter, after all, that the assets of the new company were over-valued, thought Walter—for the process of justification was now complete. Those who invested in it would get their dividends, just the same; it was a mere error in book-keeping, as it were, which made no difference to anybody in the world so long as Messrs. Tasker, Haigh kept solvent. Besides, he mused on a deeper level of his mind: “nobody could prove anything against us.”

Presently they were all drinking to the success of the new company. Tasker, who mixed the drinks, offered Walter a stiff one with a hand as steady as a rock, and Walter, imitating him, controlled his nerves and received it in a firm grasp. The two men exchanged a tiny smile of congratulation. Tasker's eyes were gleeful and caressing; Walter's earnest faith in him, backed as it was in the minds of those present by Dyson's well-known textile reputation, had served him well that afternoon. And the boy had been sensible about the Heights figures, as Tasker had guessed he would when it came to the point. It had been a bit of a risk certainly, a bit of
a gamble; but then Tasker liked risks, liked gambles—when their outcome depended on his own skill. They fed his sense of power. He murmured kindly in the young man's ear:

“You might drive Mr. Crosland home?”

Walter, thanking him with a look, nodded emphatically, and crossed the room to make his offer.

Mr. Crosland accepted with gratitude, and proposed they should leave at once. He was feeling exhausted by the strain of the afternoon, though he did not confess this to Walter; and now that the business was over and the tension generally relaxed, the meeting had broken up into groups of men holding glasses, recounting experiences and laughing hilariously, in none of which activities Mr. Crosland had any desire to join. He felt that in consenting to the company flotation he had taken the right but the disagreeable course; he should go firmly through every piece of business necessary to its success, but surveyed the prospect without enthusiasm.

Tasker, with that skill which he always displayed in handling men, showed Mr. Crosland out ceremoniously through the front door, though Walter's car stood only a few yards away from the window, and inclined his head slightly in farewell to him, again without offering his hand. This time Mr. Crosland offered his, however, and Tasker's blue eyes gleamed in triumph as he quietly shook it.

Henry Clay Crosland, looking bowed and old, lines of fatigue harrowing his parchment face, fitted himself with a little difficulty into Walter's small car, and the pair drove away.

It was a delicious evening, clear, cool and bright; the sky, pale blue at the zenith, melted into a diffused red on the western horizon; the Ashworth slopes were still green, but the distant hills, towards Hudley, were beginning to fade
into a misty purple. Presently the sound of distant church bells began to float softly on the calm air. Walter drove on slowly and competently, feeling at peace with all the world. There was to be no catastrophe, no cataclysmic change in his bright life of promise; his father's investments were safe—and here Walter made a vow to sell out five hundred of his new Tasker shares secretly as soon as he got them, buy War Loan, and put the certificates into his father's deed box at the bank—his own new happy way of life was safe. Elaine was nearer to him than ever before. Everything in the garden, in fact, thought Walter, with joyous relief, was lovely; and he would work like a Trojan at Heights to make it show large profits and help to provide the new shareholders with dividends.