The Strode Venturer (17 page)

He took me to a little drinking-club off Curzon Street owned by a man who had been at Rugby with him. But he didn’t really want to drink. He wanted to talk—about his brothers and Strode Orient and what he would do if he were in control of boardroom policy. The idea that he could dictate policy to men who had lived and worked in the City all their lives seemed distinctly naïve. But when I pointed this out to him, he laughed and said, “Why the hell do you think my father left me the shares if he didn’t want me to use them?” And he added, “I’ve a darned good mind to sell them—start a new company from scratch.” He didn’t seem to realize that he couldn’t sell them now without the assent of the majority of the board. “Who told you that?”

“Turner. It’s just to prevent you selling your shares that you’ve been elected to the board.”

“I see. Then I’d better go and have a talk with the old boy in the morning. He’ll know what I ought to do. There’s a board meeting to-morrow afternoon—specially called on my account.” He laughed and downed the rest of his drink. “Come on. Let’s go and feed.”

We had dinner together, and then, since he’d nowhere to
go and no kit, I took him back to the little furnished flat I’d rented off the King’s Road, Chelsea. In the morning he rushed off after a quick cup of coffee to buy some clothes and see his sister who had come up on the night train and was waiting for him at a friend’s flat.

I didn’t see him again until he came into my office about four when the board meeting was finally over. He’d got himself a dark suit, but it didn’t go with the sun-tanned face or the fringe of beard and he had a wild look in his eyes. “They accept the fact that I was acting in the interests of the company. That’s the only concession I got out of them.” He was laughing, but not with humour. “Impetuous and misguided. That was how Henry put it. George used stronger words.” He was pacing up and down, the poky little office caging him like an animal that has been stirred to fury. “Five of them, all sitting there at the table solemn as judges, and it took them the best part of half an hour to reach that conclusion. Talk, talk—nothing but talk. And after that they discussed the line Henry would take at the annual general meeting in June. I got them to listen to me in the end, but they didn’t want to and all the time I was talking there was a sort of frozen silence. And when I’d finished that old fox Henry washed his hands of the whole matter by telling me to take it up with his brother since the operation of the ships was Strode Orient’s business. Well, I grabbed George afterwards, but he wasn’t interested. Said it would be a costly operation and he’d no money to spare for hare-brained schemes like that. And when I told him it would cost less than one year’s directors’ fees and I was prepared to waive mine for a start, he wriggled out of it by saying that his company hadn’t the equipment or the know-how—‘You go and sell your idea to one of the big mining companies, then we might be interested’.” He leaned his hands on my desk. “Here’s a chance of grabbing something before others get hold of it—a chance to build something big.” He was glaring down at me. “But they’ve no imagination. They can’t see it.” He flung away from the desk and began pacing up and down again.

His feeling of frustration was painful to watch. I had expected this, had even tried to warn him the previous night, but that didn’t make it any pleasanter for him. And there was his pride, too. He was standing by the window, his hands clenching and unclenching, his gaze on the thin line of sky above the rooftop of the neighbouring building. “There must be some way …” He swung round on me suddenly. “Do you know anything about company law?” But he knew I didn’t and he turned back again to the window, staring up at the sky. “This damned place——” He understood what he was up against now—vested interests and the entrenched power of men who have dug themselves in over the years. They knew all the ropes of this financial labyrinth. They had the contacts, the solidity of being a part of the City. He was a newcomer, friendless and alone; a rebel with a cause, his mind seething with ideas, but no means of implementing them. “Damn old man Turner,” he said suddenly. “Going sick on me just when I need him.” He swung round on me. “I’ve got to fight them—their way, with their own weapons. Turner’s the only man who could have told me how to do it.”

“Have you seen him?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I can’t worry him with my troubles now. A man has a right to die in peace.” And he added, “They carted him off to a nursing home last Friday. It seems it’s just a question of time.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. But it didn’t surprise me, remembering how breathless and exhausted he had been at that long interview with Ida and myself. “Nevertheless, if he’s conscious I think he’d want to see you. He thinks a lot of you and …” I hesitated. But whether it had been in confidence or not I felt he should know. “He’s been buying Strode shares. Did Ida tell you?”

“No. What for?”

“I think that’s something he’d want to explain to you himself.”

He nodded. “Funny, isn’t it—the way life goes in circles. Father relied on him for advice … all his trickiest deals.
And now when he’s dying——” He turned back to the window. “I wish to God he hadn’t chosen this moment. With him to guide me——” He let it go at that. “Can you lend me some money?”

He didn’t get back to the flat until after seven-thirty. By then Ida had come to pick him up, but he barely glanced at her. He was too obsessed with his own feelings. “The last time I saw him I thought he’d live to be a hundred, he was so full of life. And now to see him like that, slumped down under a pile of blankets complaining of the cold, just his head showing and his eyes staring up at me with that faraway look as though he could already see what was on the other side … And he looked so bloody small——” He asked for a drink then and I poured him a Scotch. “My God! When I go I hope it isn’t like that—fading slowly away in a nursing home.” He gulped at his drink. “It was only his body, you see. His mind was clear. Clear as a bell.”

He wouldn’t tell us what advice the old man had given him. All he’d say was, “I had an idea and he told me how to make it work.”

It was very simple really; at least it seemed so to me when I heard he’d contacted Lingrose. He did it through Slattery and the three of them lunched together on the Friday. He made no attempt to conceal what he was doing and the significance of it was not lost on his fellow directors, particularly George Strode and Colonel Hinchcliffe, the two directors retiring by rotation. They were, of course, offering themselves for re-election and normally this would have been automatic, a mere formality. Now suddenly their whole future was threatened, for though Peter couldn’t sell his shares, they still carried voting rights, and the annual general meeting of Strode & Company was by then less than six weeks away.

George Strode called me down, wanting to know what the hell it was all about. I couldn’t tell him much that he didn’t already know, for I could see by his face and the questions he asked that he was well aware that the ground was being cut from under his feet. “If he thinks he’s going to blackmail
me into supporting his scheme …” He was angry and a little confused.

I think they all were for a special meeting of the board was hurriedly called for Tuesday morning. That was on the Monday after they’d had an opportunity of talking it over during the week-end and Whimbrill took me out to lunch in the hope that I would use my influence with Peter to avoid a head-on collision between him and the rest of the board. “I don’t think he realizes how deeply George resented his action over the
Strode Venturer.
And then to hold a pistol to their heads like this.” His hand went up to the skin-grafted ear and the side of his head where no hair grew. It was a habit of his when he was nervous or ill-at-ease. “Was this Lawrence Turner’s idea?” And when I didn’t answer, he said, “Turner’s very clever—always was.”

He must have worked very closely with Turner in the old days and I thought he was probably the source of the old man’s information about the company. “I only hope,” he murmured to himself, “that he isn’t too ill to have thought this thing through properly. George isn’t going to like it—and he can be awkward, very awkward indeed when he’s cornered.” Back in his office after lunch he lit a cigarette and reached for a folder lying in one of the trays on his desk. “The day after Peter contacted Lingrose I received letters of nomination proposing two further names for election to the board. Slattery I think you know?”

I nodded.

“The other is a man named Benjamin Wolfe. Both are directors of Liass Securities, close associates of Lingrose, and checking the share register I find that over the last three months more than a hundred and sixty-four thousand shares have changed hands, about thirty-four thousand being purchased in the names of these two gentlemen. I’ve been in the market for some myself and Turner purchased a further twenty-nine thousand odd. All the rest, some eighty-six thousand shares, have been bought on behalf of nominees. Presuming that these were acquired by Lingrose’s investment company, Liass Securities, which already held
over thirteen thousand, then I think we must reckon on Lingrose controlling a minimum of a hundred and thirty-three thousand shares. If Peter supports him, then control of the company will undoubtedly pass out of the hands of the present directors. Even if they got Turner’s backing it still wouldn’t be enough.” His face was bleak as he reached for the house phone. “Since you’re certain Peter won’t change his mind I’ll have to see whether I can’t persuade George.”

He went down to see him a few minutes later. What he had to say must have come as a shock for shortly afterwards I ran into Elliot and he told me Henry Strode was in there and Hinchcliffe too, and they had sent for le Fleming and Crane. The meeting was still going on when I left at five-thirty to pick Ida up. Peter was out with some fellow he knew in the Foreign Office and we spent most of the evening discussing what would happen if he did go in with Lingrose.

But it never came to that for George Strode called him down to his office first thing next morning and told him that Strode Orient would accept responsibility for a pilot operation in the Indian Ocean. He offered him the
Strode Trader
just laying up in Bombay at the end of a charter, and in addition to the ship and her crew, financial support to a maximum of £10,000. “Turner was right,” Peter said to me afterwards. “You can plead a cause till you drop dead in your tracks. Nobody cares a damn in a place like this. But threaten to vote them off the board, frighten them with the thought they may lose their directors’ fees——” He smiled at me sourly. “It’s human nature, I suppose. But I’ll be glad to get back to a world I know, to people I understand.”

As a result, the board meeting that afternoon was a mere formality. Henry expressed his satisfaction that, after a closer examination of what he called “our Indian Ocean venture,” his brother had decided to give it the full backing of Strode Orient’s resources. Nobody was fooled, but it sounded good, and there was more in a like vein from the other directors and from George Strode himself. It was only
at the end that the true purpose of the meeting was revealed when Henry Strode suggested, almost diffidently, that as Peter would be away he might like to sign a proxy in favour of one of his co-directors so that they would have the support of his votes at the annual general meeting.

“They weren’t taking any chances,” Peter said. “They wanted it signed then and there. But I was damned if I’d give my votes to Henry.” He had made the proxy out in favour of Whimbrill.

We celebrated expensively that night, dining at L’Ecû de France with Ida and the girl she was staying with. For them it can’t have been a very gay evening, for Peter spent most of the time discussing stores and equipment, the basic essentials he needed to get the stuff out to the ship. Later he hoped to establish a proper loading quay and blast a deep water channel into it, but at present the nearest he could get the ship was about two cables off. That meant barges, all the paraphernalia of beach loading. And he’d want mechanical diggers, loaders, transporters, a portable drilling rig, huts for the men ashore, an electric generator, refrigerator, cooking stove, fuel, food, stores. The list was almost endless. If the girls were bored by it all, they didn’t show it. Peter’s enthusiasm, his single-purposed concentration was infectious.

Next morning George Strode rang me on the house phone. I was to put myself entirely at Peter’s disposal, give him all the help I could. “And we’re throwing a little party for him to-night at the Dorchester. I’d like you to be there.”

The object of the party was a public demonstration of family solidarity. When Ida and I arrived there must have been at least two hundred people in the room—shipowners, bankers, financiers, stockbrokers, a sort of cross-section of the City and their wives, together with a sprinkling of journalists, mainly from the City offices. Henry Strode was acting as host, taking Peter round, introducing him to everybody. Then about eight o’clock he thumped on a table for silence and made a little speech welcoming him to the board. It was the usual thing—a couple of funny stories, a
few platitudes and then champagne glasses raised, his health toasted.

Somebody called out “Speech” and the next moment Peter had leapt on to a table. “Ladies and Gentlemen—Strode Orient have allocated me a ship and the necessary finance and I am leaving in a few days’ time for an unknown destination. This is a new venture, the sort of venture my father would have revelled in. I want you to drink to its success.” He raised his glass, standing there, high above that crowd of sober, calculating men, his dark faun face flushed, his eyes glinting in the light from the chandeliers.

There was a moment of stunned silence. Then a murmur that rose to a roar as, having drunk the toast, they began to speculate.

“The idiot!” Ida said. And I watched as the journalists closed in on him.

“Commander Bailey.” Slattery was at my elbow. He had a square, paunchy, rather truculent-looking man with him. “This is Mr. Lingrose.” Bright, bird-like eyes, sharp as a magpie’s stared at me out of a Jewish face that had the high colouring of blood pressure. But it was Slattery who said, “What is this venture?”