It is curious how some people get the names which suit them exactly. Joseph Gobbitt was a case in point. Inevitably, you expected a man of East Anglian tradesman stock; and the moment you set eyes on him, you felt you had been right. Hosea Gobbitt, his father, had been mayor and pork-butcher in a small Suffolk town, having risen to wealth and position by what he called “judicious trading.” “A little bit of all sorts, for all sorts of people,” he used to say to his particular friends at the Tradesmen’s Meetings—which meant that those customers who were particular got meat for which he had to pay the farmers what he considered a wholly outrageous price, showing a bare profit of sixty per cent.; whilst those who were careless, or in his debt, as well as those who ventured on sausages and similar mysteries, were liable to get the product of those diseased swine which the inspector was kind enough, and wise enough, to let him have for a few shillings each. After all, what is the use of holding Municipal Office unless you make something out of it to pay for your time? What tradesman in England ever did—at least what tradesman of his, Hosea Gobbitt’s, ability? Footman the ironmonger, and Woods the grocer—“Sandy” Woods they used to call him amongst themselves, because of his sugar, not because of his hair—did very well over contracts, and there was no reason why he should not do well over pork. After all, the inspector was their servant; they could discharge him at any moment.
Joseph Gobbitt learnt the rudiments of business in his father’s shop; but he had no intention of spending his life in a country town; consequently, at the age of eighteen he went to London, and obtained a junior clerkship in a Mincing Lane house. When he was thirty, he entered into partnership with Henry Dunk, and proceeded to turn the knowledge he had secured to such good use that, within five years, he had pretty well ruined his former employers. When he was sixty, he was reckoned, if not amongst the biggest men of Mincing Lane, at least amongst the bigger ones. He had several branches in the East, including one at Manila, which had been under the charge of Albert Dunk, son of his late partner. Taken all round, matters were going very well when, just about the time that Basil Hayle began the campaign against Felizardo, Albert Dunk died suddenly, and, to Mr Gobbitt’s mind, mysteriously. Edward Dunk, the new junior partner, Albert’s elder brother, had volunteered to go out; but, greatly to his surprise, Mr Gobbitt had declared his intention of going himself.
“You can manage here by yourself, Edward,” he said; “I have every confidence in you, every confidence. The sea-trip will do me good, and possibly there may be complications in Manila which we have not foreseen.”
Edward Dunk, not unnaturally, took the latter sentence as a slur on his brother’s memory, as foreshadowing unpleasant discoveries, and he laid his plans accordingly, with a view to repaying Mr Gobbitt in kind. As a matter of fact, however, it was a chance conversation with an American consular official which had determined the senior partner to go to the East. “It’s money they want out in the Islands,” the American had said. “There’s lots of good things to be got cheap—concessions, hemp lands, Church lands even; though our own people hold back, not knowing if we shall stay out there, whilst the British banks and financiers are too fastidious—won’t grease the Commissioners’ palms. There’s a fortune, sir, for the man who will risk his dollars. And it isn’t much risk, anyway. We are bound to stay in the Islands, now we’ve been chuckleheads enough to take them.”
Mr Joseph Gobbitt pondered deeply over these words during the long journey to Hong Kong, where, from his own manager, he obtained a certain degree of confirmation; but before he had been in Manila two days, he knew that they were true. He called officially on Mr Commissioner Gumpertz, head of the Departments of Lands and Registration, in the hope of obtaining full particulars concerning the end of Albert Dunk, who had met his death somewhere near Hippapad, which, of course, is on the other side of Felizardo’s mountains, a full ten miles—more, perhaps—to the north of the range.
“The report was that he died of fever,” the official said. “They buried him where he died. Violence? Murder? My dear sir, no. The Islands are pacified now. You could go from end to end of them unarmed. Pay no heed to the wild stories you will hear, stories circulated deliberately by our political enemies, and by the Army, which is jealous of our success. You are sure to hear them all, perhaps more than I hear.” Unconsciously he slipped some blank sheets of paper over a copy of Captain Basil Hayle’s report, which he had just been studying anew—the grim record of forty-seven men out of sixty-five slaughtered on Felizardo’s mountains by Felizardo’s bolomen. “You will hear them because you are the type of man, a broad-minded capitalist, whom they are specially anxious to keep out.”
His words gave Mr Gobbitt his cue, and a few minutes later they were no longer talking officially, but privately, about a railway concession and a copra concession, but most of all about some hemp lands. Mr Gobbitt was essentially a business man, and he put his finger on the weak spot, or what seemed the weak spot, at once. “Why,” he asked, “if there is all this splendid hemp land vacant, have not people, the natives for instance, or the Spaniards, made use of it?” And he leaned back in his chair, twirling his gold-rimmed glasses.
The Commissioner met his objections with an easy smile. “You know what the Spaniards were. Did they make use of anything? Moreover, in their days there were large bands of ladrones in the neighbourhood.” Mr Gobbitt knit his forehead, and was making a mental note of the drawback, when the Commissioner went on: “But there are none now. We have cleared them all out, all; and we have a company of Constabulary under a most energetic officer, Captain Hayle, quartered permanently in the district. Then, as to your other point, is it likely we should allow any unauthorised person to seize this land?”
Mr Joseph Gobbitt got up. He divined that, at the first interview with a high official, it would hardly be diplomatic to talk of business, of the sort of business which was obviously intended. “I will think it over,” he said. “Possibly I may hear from you.”
The Commissioner rose, too. “Very possibly some friends of mine might call,” he answered.