Читать книгу Gerald Cranston's Lady - Gilbert Frankau - Страница 27

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Sir James Guthrie was a portly, clean-shaven, bald-headed, middle-aged gentleman, who wore his new knighthood with as much dignity as his new morning-coat, his new top-hat, and his new white-spatted patent-leather boots. “Can’t say I care very much for this fellow Cranston,” thought Sir James, waiting with his head clerk, the abashed and emaciated Lauderdale, in the small, barely furnished apology for a board-room, which abutted on “this fellow Cranston’s” outer offices; “he’s altogether too inhuman for my taste. I wonder how that wife of his likes him.”

It happened that Maurice Elvery, the first of the directors to arrive, a dapper, short-jacketed, monocled little produce-broker, who spent his days on the Baltic and his evenings in the Royal Automobile Club, was thinking, as a junior ushered him briskly through the doorway, along almost identical lines.

But since the two were only City acquaintances, their thoughts found no expression beyond the one’s customary, “Good morning, Sir James,” and the other’s, “Good morning to you, Mr. Elvery”; after which, a trifle constrained, they sat down to the plain oak table, duly set out with printed statements, pens, blotting-paper, foolscap, and pewter ink-pots, to await the remainder of their colleagues; while Lauderdale, more abashed than ever, hovered behind his employer’s chair.

“Good idea, transferring the meeting to London,” commented Elvery. “What do you make of the half-year’s accounts?”

“Oh,” Sir James dry-shaved his dimpled chin, “I can’t say I’m dissatisfied. For a comparatively young concern——”

The arrival of two other directors—Robert Grayford, a Nottingham corn-factor, large of blond mustache, red of face, and ample of check waistcoat, whose business had been one of the first absorbed by Cranston’s; and McManus, the pimply little Liverpool stock and share dealer who had raised most of the outside money for the original flotation—interrupted the accountant’s monologue.

Then came Morrison, manager of the machine-works, a stubby-handed, stubble-cheeked podge of a man who believed that all trade-union leaders ended in hell. And lastly, gray-whiskered as a badger in his seedy-green early-Victorian frock-coat, old Ephraim Bewsher, originally a Cardiff ship and coal master, but now reputed to have more irons in the financial fire than any other magnate in London. Him, as befitted his wealth, Sir James, rising, greeted with an effusive, “Ah, Mr. Bewsher, we were only waiting for you.”

“Ain’t the Cranstons coming then?” Ephraim, oblivious of Sir James’s proffered hand, sat down and drew a slightly frayed specimen from the bandolier of cigars which garnished the left upper pocket of his loose waistcoat.

Sir James, very much on his dignity, resumed his chair; and a moment later Gerald Cranston, escorted by Parker and his brother, stalked deliberately into the room, nodded a brief acknowledgment of their presence to each of his co-directors, and took the big chair at the head of the table.

“In order not to waste time, gentlemen,” he began, “I suggest we take the minutes of our last meeting as read, and proceed to business.”

They proceeded to business, after the informal manner of the City, passing the accounts without comment, declaring the half-yearly dividend, congratulating one another on the market-price of their shares. “Puppets,” thought Cranston, watching them. “Puppets.”

The thought of their puppethood stimulated the power-lust in him. He saw those other directors of his—all except Ephraim Bewsher, who, saying never a word, puffed and puffed at his fraying cigar-butt—as creatures of his own will, forced either from apathy or self-interest to do as he should bid them. “Elvery,” he decided, “only took up his directorship so as to get our linseed orders. Harry’s half pledged. Morrison only cares for the factory. McManus won’t risk losing my private account. As long as Sir James gets an increased fee for the increased work he’ll be all for it. Grayford won’t interfere with anything outside the corn trade. And Parker still owes me half the money for his qualification shares....”

All the same, the fact that Ephraim Bewsher might oppose the new scheme had to be considered. The old man, quite apart from his holding in the company, was a power. He could not only find money of his own but influence other people’s. Accordingly, at the conclusion of routine, it was on the gray-whiskered, unwinking countenance of the ex-shipmaster that Gerald Cranston registered the first gun of his argument.

“Mr. Bewsher,” he opened, “as the only other practical coal-man in this room, I want to ask you a question.”

“Ask away, Cranston.” The old badger felt for a second cigar and kindled it on the butt of the first. “But don’t be long about it. I want my dinner.”

“The question’s this, Mr. Bewsher: What is going to happen to the coal-trade—and more particularly to our household coal-seams—when the Government stops interfering and we get back to normal?”

“Happen?” Ephraim grinned. “Don’t ask me what’s going to happen. Likely as not I’ll be dead by then.”

The chairman, who, despite his directness, possessed a certain business tact, countered this with a semi-affable, “I’m sure we all hope that control isn’t going to last quite so long as that, Mr. Bewsher”; and, having failed to draw the badger, opened fire on the rest of the board.

“Damme,” thought Harold, listening for the second time to his arguments, “the man’s a marvel.”

For the plans, simply though Gerald expounded them, bristled with a bewilderment of facts and figures, so that long before he was through, even Sir James Guthrie acknowledged himself, for once in a way, defeated. “I hope you’re taking those calculations down,” whispered Sir James to the obsequious Lauderdale.

Ephraim Bewsher, however, as Gerald could see, was neither defeated nor convinced. “Cut the cackle, Cranston,” he grunted half-way through the piece. “It’s easy enough to talk about marketing domestic coal direct to the London consumer, but how are you going to set about it?”

“In exactly the same way as other coal-merchants, Mr. Bewsher”—the chairman’s voice continued suave—“in the same way, to be precise, as we are already conducting, or trying to conduct, our business in the Midlands. My proposal is that we have our own London depots, our own order-offices, and our own lorries.”

“And how much do you think that’s going to cost?”

“For the first year”—Cranston never batted an eyelid—“fifty thousand.”

“And for the next?”

“Say a hundred thousand.”

“It’ll take all that,” interrupted Ephraim, “and maybe a hundred thousand more.”

“Then,” Grayford spoke, “I don’t think we ought to do it.”

“Nor I,” chorused Elvery.

“I dispute that last statement, Mr. Bewsher.” A little of its suavity deserted Cranston’s voice, and his blue eyes flickered battle up and down the table.

“Do I understand you to suggest, Mr. Cranston”—Sir James Guthrie, scenting trouble, did his best to start a fresh hare—“that we should issue fresh capital to finance this distributing scheme?”

“Not for the moment, Sir James.” The chairman’s eyes still flickered over the faces of his puppets. “For the moment, a bank loan ought to see us through.”

“As a public company,” Ephraim returned to the attack, “you’ll get no bank loan without a debenture. And if you issue a debenture, you’ll knock twenty-five per cent off the market-price of your ordinary shares.”

“That, too,” said Cranston curtly, “I dispute.”

“I should hardly think, Mr. Bewsher”—once more Sir James Guthrie intervened—“that for a mere fifty thousand, the bank would insist on a debenture. The directors’ guarantee, perhaps——”

“Guarantees be sugared,” growled Ephraim, the cigar-ash speckling his waistcoat. “And what about the interest? That’ll tot up to four thousand a year.”

Whereupon, rather to his brother’s surprise, Harold Cranston broke silence with a loyal: “Gentlemen, aren’t we rather rushing our fences? Surely the first thing to do is to decide whether we agree to these proposals. If we do agree, the money question can be discussed later. Personally, though I’m no expert, I must say that my brother’s idea seems to have its points. In the Midlands, now——”

Harold talked on, till eventually Maurice Elvery, his thoughts on his linseed business, changed ground. “I must say,” remarked that dapper little individual, “that, having heard our managing director’s views, I am more inclined to agree with our chairman.”

“And you, Grayford?” Cranston seized the opportunity. “Leaving finance on one side, what’s your opinion?”

“My opinion”—Grayford inserted both thumbs in the arm-holes of his check waistcoat—“apart from finance, of course, is the same as Elvery’s. But I’m no coal-man. It’s for you and your brother and Mr. Bewsher to advise us on the technical points.”

“And yours, Morrison?”

“Well,” the works-manager passed a stubby hand over his chin stubble, “if you ask me, it’s a question of labor.”

Discussion on these lines lasted more or less amicably for five minutes, at the end of which it became apparent to Ephraim Bewsher that, if matters were put to the vote, he would be beaten. “Obstinate fellow, this Cranston,” mused that astute individual. “One of your make-or-break sort. He’ll break, I think. Still, he’s got ’em all in his pocket. Now, talking of pockets, I wonder——”

Ephraim Bewsher continued to wonder while Cranston, his puppets once more in hand, elaborated his plans to the terse conclusion: “If, as I take it, you all approve, the sooner you empower me to start operations the better.”

Then, surprisingly, he butted in with a chuckling: “Gentlemen, I’m an old man, and a very small shareholder. It’s not for me to gainsay our chairman. Maybe he’s right, and I’m wrong. Anyway, I’ll not oppose the scheme. Let’s cut the cackle again, gentlemen. Mr. Cranston, here, tells us he wants a free hand. That, I take it, means that he’ll not ask the rest of us, especially an old man like myself”—the chuckle rose—“to guarantee his fifty-thousand-pound overdraft.”

“Artful devil,” thought Gerald Cranston, “so that’s what he was driving at all the time.”

Nevertheless, for fear of arousing further opposition, he had to concede the point; and—the badger, pleading it was “high time for his dinner,” having withdrawn—Parker, acting on Sir James Guthrie’s pompous instructions, made a note that “The directors further empowered the chairman to take whatever steps he might think necessary for the expansion of the company’s coal business.”

On which note, the board meeting proceeded—Elvery with Sir James, Lauderdale with Parker, and the remainder of it with the chairman—to lunch.