“Can do,” the other answered, and went slowly out.
“Well, I’m blowed!” Tom gasped.
Holman went wearily to the window, and stood watching moodily the human yellow kaleidoscope. The compradore was among them now, and gradually the trouble cooled and slacked, and the men began to slouch off to work, but reluctantly, the manager thought. Things looked ugly to him—very ugly.
“I say, Holman,” Carruthers persisted impatiently, “isn’t that playing rather into those chaps’ hands?”
Holman was furious—he had been furious for days now—and he welcomed some human thing upon which he dared to vent his rage. He was “about fed up” with the frets and troubles of the last week. He fixed Tom Carruthers with a vindictive eye. “See here, Mr. Carruthers,” he spat out, “if I have any further interference I’ll resign instantly—understand? I managed this branch for years, until the governor took a notion to come out. Well—he’s a genius at business, and I’m proud to take my orders from him. But somehow, the very devil’s in it these last two weeks, and we’re up against a bigger proposition than you—or the governor either—have any idea of. I’m doing my best to cope with it, and, by heaven——”
“Sorry to upset you, old chap,” the other interrupted regretfully, “but, believe me, this succession of disasters has just about whacked me.”
“Oh! all right,” the older man said, relieved by his own explosion, and easily mollified after having let slip the snappy little dogs of his badly over-tried temper, “I haven’t the heart to show this to Mr. Gregory,” he said, taking the wire from his pocket into which he had thrust it, “damned if I have.” He spread the flimsy paper out on the desk, and sent Tom a glance that was an invitation. He wanted sympathy, even that of the “somebody’s son sent out to learn the business,” as he contemptuously said of Carruthers when he did not call him “a flannelled fool.” The latter gibe was not quite fair. Tom usually wore ducks, as Holman himself did—you had to in Hong Kong—and though the younger man did squander (if it were squandering) a good deal of time with Hilda Gregory, he only gave a reasonable, wholesome amount to rackets, cricket, and Happy Valley racecourse.
“On top of all else,” Holman continued, “look here!”
Tom came and stood at Holman’s chair, and read over his shoulder. “Good God, Holman!” he cried, “the Feima sent to the bottom!”
“The biggest and finest ship in our fleet,” the other said bitterly. “Mutiny of the coolies—they scuttle the ship and bolt with the boats two days out!”