“Certainly I am. I’ve promised.”
“Well, in that case I had better protect you to the best of my ability.”
I was immensely gratified to find I had won a victory at such a comparatively small cost to my self-respect.
Marshall went to my desk and began to write hurriedly, and very soon “This Indenture Witnessed that Whereas &c.” I made a transitory appearance in the document under my proper name and title, being “herein-after known” as something else, as which I should never have recognised myself. I had always a difficulty in understanding this kind of composition, and Marshall’s essay was no exception to the rule. But I gathered that the payment to me of five per cent. on my capital was to be a first charge on the assets and profits of the concern, and was to be independent of any agreed share of such profits “if and when accruing.”
There was another clause empowering me at any time to have all “ships, vessels, premises, stock-in-trade, books, accounts,” and various other things which might or might not be our property, examined, inspected, valued, and various other things done to them, by an accountant to be nominated by me, and who was to make me an account, and do all sorts of other arduous things which would have conveyed nothing whatever to me.
I protested against both these clauses; against the first as showing avarice, and against the second as suggesting suspicion.
“I don’t think Captain Welfare would like it,” I said.
“I don’t expect for a moment that he will,” Marshall replied grimly, “but they’re going in all the same. That’s what I am here for.”
I had gained so much of my own way that I did not care to contest the point. Besides, I reflected, I could explain to Edmund that I didn’t intend to act on either of them.
When the drafts of the agreement came down for signature, however, Welfare took them quite as a matter of course and assured me he would have insisted on them himself.