Читать книгу Goslings (John Davys ("J.D.") Beresford) (Literary Thoughts Edition) - J. D. Beresford - Страница 16

2

When he came back into the counting-house, Gosling looked unnaturally thoughtful.

“Anything gorne wrong?” asked his crony, Flack.

“There’s nothing wrong with the ’ouse, if that’s what you mean,” replied Gosling mysteriously.

“What then?” asked Flack.

“It’s this ’ere new plague,” returned Gosling.

“Tchah! That’s all my eye,” said Flack. He was a narrow-chested, high-shouldered man of sixty, with a thin grey beard, and he had a consistently incredulous mind.

Out here in the counting-house, Gosling’s thrill of fear was rapidly subsiding, and he had no intention of passing over his own important part in the house’s decision to buy for a rise; so he bulged out his cheeks, shook his head and said:

“Not by a long chalk it ain’t, Flack; not by a long chalk. There was that young feller, Thrale, as I was tellin’ you about; ’e gave me a hidea or two, and now s’mornin’ we ’ave this very serious news from Berlin.”

“Papers ’ave to make the worst of everything,” said Flack. “It’s their livin’.”

“Anyways,” continued Gosling, “I put it quite straight to the ’ouse this mornin’, as we might do worse under the circumstances than buy ’eavily....”

“You did?” asked Flack, and he cocked up his spectacles and looked at Gosling underneath them.

“I did,” replied Gosling.

“What did Mr Barker say to that?” asked Flack.

“He took my advice.”

“Lord’s sakes, you don’t tell me so?” said Flack, his spectacles on his forehead.

“I’m now about to dictate various letters to our ’ouse in Dundee,” replied Gosling, dropping his voice to a whisper, and assuming an air of mysterious importance, “advising them to send our Mr Stewart to Vienna immediate, from where ’e is to proceed to Berlin. ’E is, also, to ’ave private instructions from the ’ouse as to the extent of ‘is buyin’—which I may tell you in confidence, Flack, will be enormous—e-normous.” Gosling raised his head slowly on the first syllable, brought it down with a jerk on the second, and left the third largely to the imagination.

“But d’yer mean to tell me,” expostulated Flack, “as all this is on account of this plague? They been usin’ that as a blind, my boy.”

Gosling laid a bunch of swollen fingers on his colleague’s arm. “I tell you, Flack, old boy,” he said, “that this is serious. When Mr Barker took up my advice, as ’e did very quick, Mr Prince said, ‘You don’t tell me as you really take this plague serious, Barker?’ ’e said. And Mr Barker looked up and says, ‘I’m goin’ to put all my money on it.’” Gosling paused and then repeated, “Mr Barker says as ’e’s goin’ to put all our money on it, Flack.”

“Lord’s sakes!” said Flack. Here, indeed, was an argument strong enough to break down even his consistent incredulity. “But d’yer mean to tell me,” he persisted, “that Mr Barker thinks as it’ll come to England?”

“We-el, you know,” returned Gosling, “we need not, p’raps go quite so far as that. But it may go far enough to interfere with European markets, there may be trouble with quarantine, and such-like....”

“Ah, well, that,” said Flack with an air of relief. “Jus’ so, jus’ so. Mr Barker can see as far through a brick wall as most people, and so I’ve always said.” He dropped his spectacles on to his nose again, and returned to his interrupted accountancy.

Gosling went fussily into his own room and rang for his typist—a competent and presentable young woman, among whose duties that of turning her superior’s letters into equivalent English was not the lightest.