“What’s this. Five thousand pounds open account? Anything over that to be drawn for at six months? We don’t want all that credit, Peter.”
“Yes, we do. I may have to take some more of my capital out. The factory, you know.”
Simpson put down the contract. “Of course it’s not for me to advise you: but aren’t you getting just a little out of your depth?”
“You charge me with interest on the money which I draw out,” began Peter, temper swiftly frayed. Then relenting, “Oh, it’s quite all right, old man, I know what I’m doing.”
A huge black outline loomed up against the glass door, knocked, said in a guttural voice “May I come in?”
Entered Julius Hagenburg: top-hatted, black-moustached, patent-booted, flower at buttonhole: Hagenburg, naturalized Englishman, undoubtedly the best salesman of fine cigars in Europe—and the worst payer. What Peter’s investment in Nirvana meant to Simpson, Simpson’s credit to Hagenburg meant to Peter. Yet it was a profitable account, amazingly so. Hagenburg rarely bought less than thirty thousand cigars at a clip; would pay anything from three to seven pounds a hundred for them.
How he disposed of the goods, neither of the partners knew; though Peter, who had met the man frequently on his own Continental cigarette-expeditions, had a shrewd idea that most of the cigars—which went, under bond, in plain cases, from London to Amsterdam—eventually found their way, at entirely fictitious prices, to such places as the Sporting Club in Monte Carlo, the Jockey Club in Vienna, and even as far as the gipsy-haunted private rooms in the night-restaurants of St. Petersburg.
However, this time Hagenburg had brought money, nearly a thousand pounds of it, in “ready.”
“You will give me a receipt now, please,” he said to Simpson, who went out of the room, notes rustling in his hands, leaving Peter and his pet aversion together.
“I hear you got back the sole agency of the Beckmann brand,” said the German, sitting down and lighting a black cigar from the box that Peter pushed across to him.