The Blotting Book (4 page)

"I wish to heaven you hadn't found it necessary to let young Assheton
know that his £30,000 had increased to £40,000," he said. "That's £10,000
more to get back."

"Ah, it was just that which gave him, so he thought, such good cause for
reposing complete confidence in me," remarked Mr. Taynton. "But as you
say, it is £10,000 more to get back, and I should not have told him, were
not certain ledgers of earlier years so extremely, extremely unmistakable
on the subject."

"But if he is not going to look at ledgers at all—" began Mills.

"Ah, the concealment of that sort of thing is one of the risks which it
is not worth while to take," said the other, dropping for a moment the
deferential attitude.

Mills was silent again. Then:

"Have you bought that option in Boston Coppers," he asked.

"Yes; I bought to-day."

Mills glanced at the clock as Mr. Taynton rose to go.

"Still only a quarter to twelve," he said. "If you have time, you might
give me a detailed statement. I hardly know what you have done. It won't
take a couple of minutes."

Mr. Taynton glanced at the clock likewise, and then put down his
hat again.

"I can just spare the time," he said, "but I must get home by twelve; I
have unfortunately come out without my latchkey, and I do not like
keeping the servants up."

He pressed his fingers over his eyes a moment and then spoke.

Ten minutes later he was in the bird-cage of the lift again, and by
twelve he had been admitted into his own house, apologising most amiably
to his servant for having kept him up. There were a few letters for him
and he opened and read those, then lit his bed-candle and went upstairs,
but instead of undressing, sat for a full quarter of an hour in his
armchair thinking. Then he spoke softly to himself.

"I think dear Mills means mischief in some way," he said. "But really for
the moment it puzzles me to know what. However, I shall see tomorrow. Ah,
I wonder if I guess!"

Then he went to bed, but contrary to custom did not get to sleep for a
long time. But when he did there was a smile on his lips; a patient
contented smile.

Mr. Taynton's statement to his partner, which had taken him so few
minutes to give, was of course concerned only with the latest financial
operation which he had just embarked in, but for the sake of the reader
it will be necessary to go a little further back, and give quite shortly
the main features of the situation in which he and his partner found
themselves placed.

Briefly then, just two years ago, at the time peace was declared in South
Africa, the two partners of Taynton and Mills had sold out £30,000 of
Morris Assheton's securities, which owing to their excellent management
was then worth £40,000, and seeing a quite unrivalled opportunity of
making their fortunes, had become heavy purchasers of South African
mines, for they reasoned that with peace once declared it was absolutely
certain that prices would go up. But, as is sometimes the way with
absolute certainties, the opposite had happened and they had gone down.
They cut their loss, however, and proceeded to buy American rails. In six
months they had entirely repaired the damage, and seeing further
unrivalled opportunities from time to time, in buying motorcar shares, in
running a theatre and other schemes, had managed a month ago to lose all
that was left of the £30,000. Being, therefore, already so deeply
committed, it was mere prudence, the mere instinct of self-preservation
that had led them to sell out the remaining £10,000, and to-day Mr.
Taynton had bought an option in Boston Copper with it. The manner of an
option is as follows:

Boston Copper to-day was quoted at £5 10S 6d, and by paying a premium of
twelve shillings and sixpence per share, they were entitled to buy Boston
Copper shares any time within the next three months at a price of £6 3s.
Supposing therefore (as Mr. Taynton on very good authority had supposed)
that Boston Copper, a rapidly improving company, rose a couple of points
within the next three months, and so stood at £7 10S 6d; he had the right
of exercising his option and buying them at £6 3S thus making £1 7S 6d
per share. But a higher rise than this was confidently expected, and
Taynton, though not really of an over sanguine disposition, certainly
hoped to make good the greater part if not all of their somewhat large
defalcations. He had bought an option of 20,000 shares, the option of
which cost (or would cost at the end of those months) rather over
£10,000. In other words, the moment that the shares rose to a price
higher than £6 3s, all further appreciation was pure gain. If they did
not rise so high, he would of course not exercise the option, and
sacrifice the money.

That was certainly a very unpleasant thing to contemplate, but it had
been more unpleasant when, so far as he knew, Morris was on the verge of
matrimony, and would then step into the management of his own affairs.
But bad though it all was, the situation had certainly been immensely
ameliorated this evening, since on the one hand his partner had, it was
not unreasonable to hope, said to Madge's father things about Morris that
made his marriage with Madge exceedingly unlikely, while on the other
hand, even if it happened, his affairs, according to his own wish, would
remain in Mr. Taynton's hands with the same completeness as heretofore.
It would, of course, be necessary to pay him his income, and though this
would be a great strain on the finances of the two partners, it was
manageable. Besides (Mr. Taynton sincerely hoped that this would not be
necessary) the money which was Mrs. Assheton's for her lifetime was in
his hands also, so if the worst came to the worst—

Now the composition and nature of the extraordinary animal called man is
so unexpected and unlikely that any analysis of Mr. Taynton's character
may seem almost grotesque. It is a fact nevertheless that his was a
nature capable of great things, it is also a fact that he had long ago
been deeply and bitterly contrite for the original dishonesty of using
the money of his client. But by aid of those strange perversities of
nature, he had by this time honestly and sincerely got to regard all
their subsequent employments of it merely as efforts on his part to make
right an original wrong. He wanted to repair his fault, and it seemed to
him that to commit it again was the only means at his disposal for doing
so. A strain, too, of Puritan piety was bound up in the constitution of
his soul, and in private life he exercised high morality, and was also
kind and charitable. He belonged to guilds and societies that had as
their object the improvement and moral advancement of young men. He was a
liberal patron of educational schemes, he sang a fervent and fruity tenor
in the choir of St. Agnes, he was a regular communicant, his nature
looked toward good, and turned its eyes away from evil. To do him justice
he was not a hypocrite, though, if all about him were known, and a
plebiscite taken, it is probable that he would be unanimously condemned.
Yet the universal opinion would be wrong: he was no hypocrite, but only
had the bump of self-preservation enormously developed. He had cheated
and swindled, but he was genuinely opposed to cheating and swindling. He
was cheating and swindling now, in buying the option of Boston Copper.
But he did not know that: he wanted to repair the original wrong, to hand
back to Morris his fortune unimpaired, and also to save himself. But of
these two wants, the second, it must be confessed, was infinitely the
stronger. To save himself there was perhaps nothing that he would stick
at. However, it was his constant wish and prayer that he might not be led
into temptation. He knew well what his particular temptation was, namely
this instinct of self-preservation, and constantly thought and meditated
about it. He knew that he was hardly himself when the stress of it came
on him; it was like a possession.

Mills, though an excellent partner and a man of most industrious habits,
had, so Mr. Taynton would have admitted, one little weak spot. He never
was at the office till rather late in the morning. True, when he came, he
soon made up for lost time, for he was possessed, as we have seen, of a
notable quickness and agility of mind, but sometimes Taynton found that
he was himself forced to be idle till Mills turned up, if his signature
or what not was required for papers before work could be further
proceeded with. This, in fact, was the case next morning, and from half
past eleven Mr. Taynton had to sit idly in his office, as far as the work
of the firm was concerned until his partner arrived. It was a little
tiresome that this should happen to-day, because there was nothing else
that need detain him, except those deeds for the execution of which his
partner's signature was necessary, and he could, if only Mills had been
punctual, have gone out to Rottingdean before lunch, and inspected the
Church school there in the erection of which he had taken so energetic an
interest. Timmins, however, the gray-haired old head clerk, was in the
office with him, and Mr. Taynton always liked a chat with Timmins.

"And the grandson just come home, has he Mr. Timmins?" he was saying. "I
must come and see him. Why he'll be six years old, won't he, by now?"

"Yes, sir, turned six."

"Dear me, how time goes on! The morning is going on, too, and still Mr.
Mills isn't here."

He took a quill pen and drew a half sheet of paper toward him, poised
his pen a moment and then wrote quickly.

"What a pity I can't sign for him," he said, passing his paper over to
the clerk. "Look at that; now even you, Timmins, though you have seen Mr.
Mills's handwriting ten thousand times, would be ready to swear that the
signature was his, would you not?"

Timmins looked scrutinisingly at it.

"Well, I'm sure, sir! What a forger you would have made!" he said
admiringly. "I would have sworn that was Mr. Mills's own hand of write.
It's wonderful, sir."

Mr. Taynton sighed, and took the paper again.

"Yes, it is like, isn't it?" he said, "and it's so easy to do. Luckily
forgers don't know the way to forge properly."

"And what might that be, sir?" asked Timmins.

"Why, to throw yourself mentally into the nature of the man whose
handwriting you wish to forge. Of course one has to know the handwriting
thoroughly well, but if one does that one just has to visualise it, and
then, as I said, project oneself into the other, not laboriously copy the
handwriting. Let's try another. Ah, who is that letter from? Mrs.
Assheton isn't it. Let me look at the signature just once again."

Mr. Taynton closed his eyes a moment after looking at it. Then he took
his quill, and wrote quickly.

"You would swear to that, too, would you not, Timmins?" he asked.

"Why, God bless me yes, sir," said he. "Swear to it on the book."

The door opened and as Godfrey Mills came in, Mr. Taynton tweaked the
paper out of Timmins's hand, and tore it up. It might perhaps seem
strange to dear Mills that his partner had been forging his signature,
though only in jest.

"'Fraid I'm rather late," said Mills.

"Not at all, my dear fellow," said Taynton without the slightest touch of
ill-humour. "How are you? There's very little to do; I want your
signature to this and this, and your careful perusal of that. Mrs.
Assheton's letter? No, that only concerns me; I have dealt with it."

A quarter of an hour was sufficient, and at the end Timmins carried the
papers away leaving the two partners together. Then, as soon as the door
closed, Mills spoke.

"I've been thinking over our conversation of last night," he said, "and
there are some points I don't think you have quite appreciated, which I
should like to put before you."

Something inside Mr. Taynton's brain, the same watcher perhaps who looked
at Morris so closely the evening before, said to him. "He is going to try
it on." But it was not the watcher but his normal self that answered. He
beamed gently on his partner.

"My dear fellow, I might have been sure that your quick mind would have
seen new aspects, new combinations," he said.

Mills leaned forward over the table.

"Yes, I have seen new aspects, to adopt your words," he said, "and I will
put them before you. These financial operations, shall we call them, have
been going on for two years now, have they not? You began by losing a
large sum in South Africans—"

"We began," corrected Mr. Taynton, gently. He was looking at the other
quite calmly; his face expressed no surprise at all; if there was
anything in his expression beyond that of quiet kindness, it was
perhaps pity.

"I said 'you,'" said Mills in a hectoring tone, "and I will soon explain
why. You lost a large sum in South Africans, but won it back again in
Americans. You then again, and again contrary to my advice, embarked in
perfect wild-cat affairs, which ended in our—I say 'our' here—getting
severely scratched and mauled. Altogether you have frittered away
£30,000, and have placed the remaining ten in a venture which to my mind
is as wild as all the rest of your unfortunate ventures. These
speculations have, almost without exception, been choices of your own,
not mine. That was
one
of the reasons why I said 'you,' not 'we.'"

He paused a moment.

"Another reason is," he said, "because without any exception the
transactions have taken place on your advice and in your name, not in
mine."

That was a sufficiently meaning statement, but Mills did not wish his
partner to be under any misapprehension as to what he implied.

"In other words," he said, "I can deny absolutely all knowledge of the
whole of those operations."

Mr. Taynton gave a sudden start, as if the significance of this had only
this moment dawned on him, as if he had not understood the first
statement. Then he seemed to collect himself.