Mammon and Co.

by E. F. Benson

[CHAPTER VII]

THE SECOND DEAL

It was some eight weeks after Easter that Mr. Alington decided to make the next move in the game of Carmel, a move which should be decisive and momentous. He would have preferred for certain reasons to put it off a little while yet, for he had much on his hands, but the balance on the whole inclined to immediate action. During the last four or five months he had done a considerable deal of business as a company-promoter, and at the present moment had some half-million of pounds engaged in other affairs than mines. Motor-cars in particular had much occupied him, and he was the happy possessor of many patents for noiseless tires, automatic brakes, simpler steering-apparatus, and what not. He was a man of really large ideas where money was concerned, and a perfect godsend to patentees, for his policy was to buy up any invention concerning motors which possessed even the most modest merit, in the hopes that, say, in two years' time every motor-car that was built must probably carry one or more of the patents owned by him. He had, indeed, at the present moment in England not more than twenty thousand pounds which he could conveniently devote to the booming of Carmel, but there was lodged with Mr. Richard Chavasse in Melbourne a sum of not less than fifty thousand pounds, with which it was his purpose to supply the "strong support in Australia," to the end that Carmel should rise rainbow-hued above the ruck of all other mines. Altogether his position was a good one, for the last six weeks had brought him from his manager the most excellent private accounts of the mine, which for the most part he had saved up till the booming began. Mr. Linkwood also advised very strongly a fresh issue of shares. They had at present, for instance, only an eighty-stamp mill, whereas at the rate at which they were now getting gold out there was easily work for a mill of a hundred and fifty or two hundred stamps.

It was on this "strong support in Australia" by the convenient Mr. Chavasse that Mr. Alington chiefly relied; that at any rate should be the final touch. He intended first of all to make a large purchase of his own in England, ten thousand shares at least, and immediately publish encouraging news from the mine. This he would preface, as he had so often done before, by a wire to Mr. Richard Chavasse, which in a few hours would bring forth the accustomed reply, "Strong support in Australia."

But though he would have preferred having a somewhat larger sum at his own disposal for the grand coup, he had reason for wishing to start the boom at once. Speculators had recovered from the scare of Carmel East and West, and already, before he had himself moved in the matter, the quotation for Carmel had risen from its lowest price of ten to eleven shillings up to sixteen. This was sufficient in his opinion to show that the public was already nibbling, for professional operators, he knew, were not entering this market, and this was the correct moment to give the fresh impetus. There had been a nineteen days' account just before Easter, which had made the market dull, but since then it had begun to show more vitality.

Other reasons also were his. He was beginning, for instance, to be a little nervous about the immediate success of his dealings in the motor trade. His patents were floated into companies, but in few instances only had the shares been well supported, and in more than one he had incurred a loss—recoverable no doubt in time—which even to a man of his means was serious. Worse than that, if this ill-success continued, it would not be the best thing for his name, and he was most anxious to get Carmel really a-booming while his prestige was still high. Again, many fresh mines had been started in Western Australia since the original flotation of the Carmel group, and his financial sense led him to distrust the greater part of them. Several had been grossly mismanaged from the first, some grossly misrepresented. Others he suspected did not exist at all, and he wished to hit the psychological moment when speculators were ready, as the improvement in Carmel shares had shown, to invest, and before they had seen too much of West Australian mines to make them shy. That moment he considered had come.

Accordingly he instructed his broker to make his own large purchase. This was ten days before settling day, and he hoped to sell out again before those ten days were passed. He had at first intended to purchase only ten thousand shares, but going over his scheme step by step, and being unable to see how it was possible, with this combination of satisfactory news from the mine, his own purchase, and Mr. Chavasse's strong support in Australia, that the shares could fail to rise, he decided to purchase five thousand shares more than he could pay for. It was humanly impossible that the shares should not rise. Consequently on Thursday he telegraphed out to his manager to send a long cablegram embodying all the private news he had himself been receiving for two months back, to his broker, made his own purchase on Friday morning, and the same afternoon sent a cipher telegram to Mr. Chavasse, telling him to invest the whole of his capital then lying at Melbourne Bank in Carmel, and another in cipher to the manager, bidding him wire "Strong support in Australia." Thus in twenty-four hours his coup was made, and he went back to his Passion Music and his prints, to wait quietly for the news of the strong support in Australia. Already in a few hours after his own purchase, backed up as it was with the first of the favourable reports from the mine, the shares had risen three-eighths; the effect on the market, therefore, of the Australian support, he considered, level-headed man of business as he was, to be inevitable.

He was dining out that evening with Lord Haslemere, and was disposed in anticipation to enjoy himself. Lady Haslemere, it is true, was apt to be tedious when she talked about her own transactions in the City, and asked him whether the rise in some mine of which nobody had even heard was likely to continue, and was it not clever of her to have bought the shares at one and a half, for within a week they had risen to two and a sixteenth. She got the tip out of Truth. Mr. Alington, however, had all the indifference of the professional in money matters to the scrannel operations of the amateur, and when in answer to a question of his it appeared that Lady Haslemere had only twenty shares in this marvellous mine, and had worked herself up into a perfect fever of indecision as to whether they should take her certain eleven pounds profit, or be very brave and fly at fourteen, he felt himself really powerless to understand her agitations.

This evening directly after dinner she collared and cornered him, and finance was in her eye.