On Friday they resumed their conversation, and Mr. de Vinne arrived

with a plan. It was a good plan. He was tremulous with pride at the

thought of it, and demanded applause and approval with every second

breath, which was unlike him.

He was a man of many companies, good, bad, and indifferent, and,

reviewing the enterprises with which his name was associated, he had,

without the slightest difficulty, placed his finger upon the least

profitable and certainly the most hopeless proposition in the Mazeppa

Trading Company. And nothing could be better for Mr. de Vinne's

purpose, not, as he explained to Fred Pole, if he had searched the

Stock Exchange Year Book from cover to cover.

Once upon a time the Mazeppa Trading Company had been a profitable

concern. Its trading stores had dotted the African hinterland thickly.

It had exported vast quantities of Manchester goods and Birmingham

junk, and had received in exchange unlimited quantities of rubber and

ivory. But those were in the bad old days, before authority came and

taught the aboriginal natives the exact value of a sixpenny

looking-glass.

No longer was it possible to barter twenty pounds' worth of ivory for

threepennyworth of beads, and the flourishing Mazeppa Trading Company

languished and died. Its managers had grown immensely wealthy from

their peculations and private trading, and had come home and were

occupying opulent villas at Wimbledon, whilst the new men who had been

sent to take their places had been so inexperienced that profits fell

to nothing. That, in brief, was the history of the Mazeppa Trading

Company, which still maintained a few dilapidated stores, managed by

half-castes and poor whites.

"I got most of the shares for a song," confessed Mr. de Vinne. "In

fact, I happen to be one of the debenture-holders, and stepped in when

things were going groggy. We've been on the point of winding it up--it

is grossly over-capitalised--but I kept it going in the hope that

something would turn up."

"What is the general idea?" asked Mr. Fred Pole, interested.

"We'll get a managing director," said Mr. de Vinne solemnly. "A man

who is used to the handling of natives, a man acquainted with the West

Coast of Africa, a man who can organise."

"Bones?" suggested Mr. Fred.

"Bones be--jiggered!" replied de Vinne scornfully. "Do you think he'd

fall for that sort of thing? Not on your life! We're not going to

mention it to Bones. But he has a pal--Sanders; you've heard of him.

He's a commissioner or something on the West Coast, and retired. Now,

my experience of a chap of that kind who retires is that he gets sick

to death of doing nothing. If we could only get at him and persuade

him to accept the managing directorship, with six months a year on the

Coast, at a salary of, say, two thousand a year, conditional on taking

up six or seven thousand pounds' worth of shares, what do you think

would happen?"




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