“Katsuma didn’t want to. He was up to the usual Jap trick—running out from a losing game. They never stand for their beating. You made him a price, f.o.b. Havana, that included cost, insurance and freight, did you not?”
Old Casson nodded miserably.
“Well, Katsuma got a notion that shipping rice to Havana was apt to lead to great grief, so he just didn’t meet the draft. That keeps the owners of the Malayan out of their freight money and the chances are they will not permit the vessel to sail until the freight is paid. Did they come back on us for the freight?”
“They did. I paid it, and the Malayan is at sea with a cargo of eight thousand tons of rice fully insured but not paid for. It is going to cost us eighteen cents a pound to deliver that rice in Havana, and when it gets there we cannot deliver it. If we do it will be worth what we can get for it—say three to five cents—and the demurrage on the Malayan will be two thousand dollars a day. Of course we have a suit against Katsuma and Company for breach of contract, but in the meantime we have to pay for the rice and I’ve given a ninety-day draft on London for that——”
“When it comes due we will not be able to meet it,” Dan said dully. “The Katsuma assets are already nicely sequestrated. You monumental jackass! Why didn’t you sue and attach their bank account, everything they have, quietly and without notice, the instant you learned they had repudiated their contract?”
“That would be a great deal like locking the stable door after the horse had been stolen, wouldn’t it, Pritchard?”
Dan nodded. This was the first bright thing he could remember Casson having said in years. Yes, the wily Orientals had seen the storm gathering and had fled to their cyclone cellar, caring not a whit what happened to others, to their own business honor, to their business, provided their capital remained intact. They could always organize again under a new name.
“Well, we’ve been sent to the cleaners, Mr. Casson. You have succeeded magnificently, despite all I could do to thwart you. You have made a hiatus of your own life and mine. You’ve smashed your wife and Maisie. You were drowning; I tried to save you and you pulled me under with you. Well, I don’t know what you intend doing with your private fortune—if you have any, which I doubt—but I have assets close to two million dollars and our creditors can have them. As your partner I am jointly and severally responsible. If you cannot pay, I must. I shall. When the squall hits us we will call a meeting of our creditors, tell them how it happened, have a receiver appointed, turn over everything we have to him and quit business with whatever dignity we can muster.”
He turned to Mrs. Casson. “If you will excuse me, Mrs. Casson, I will go now. Good night.”
He went out into the hall and his head hung low on his heaving breast, his shoulders sagged, his arms dangled loosely from his long, raw-boned frame. He shook his head a little and mumbled something—curses, doubtless. At the bottom of the stairs he ran into Maisie. Her face was very white and she had been weeping.