Swirling Waters Part 55

"You'll prove to me that you're Clifford Matheson right enough?"

"Within half an hour. And give you a full interview, explaining my reasons for the announcement."

"Well, I'm on!"

Martin had a well-deserved newspaper reputation for accuracy and good judgment. On his urgent recommendation, therefore, the managing editor of the _Daily Truth_ consented to run Clifford Matheson's full-page advertis.e.m.e.nt and to insert the interview, contingent on his depositing with Martin a cheque for 250,000 to indemnify the paper against a possible libel action on the part of Lars Larssen.

Matheson also prepared letters to Sir Francis Letchmere, Lord St Aubyn, and Carleton-Wingate, giving a statement of his reasons for the announcement in the _Daily Truth_ of the next morning, and asking them to send telegrams to all those who had made applications for shares. The telegram to be sent out was worded:--

"I strongly advise all investors to cancel by wire their applications for shares in Hudson Bay Transport. See explanation in Daily Truth of May 3rd.--Clifford Matheson."

Martin, who was leaving for London by a midnight train, took charge of the three letters and promised to have them safely delivered to the three Directors of the company early in the morning.

Two days later, Matheson had to leave his wife in the hands of the doctors in order to attend a brief meeting of the Board of Directors of Hudson Bay Transport, Ltd.

They were seated in the stately board-room of the London and United Kingdom Bank in Lombard Street, at one end of the huge oval table over which the affairs of nations are settled. Clifford Matheson was in the chair.

The routine business of the meeting had been cleared when a clerk announced that Mr Larssen wished to enter. Until the allotments had been made by the other four Directors, he had no legal right to sit at the board of the company or to take part in any discussion. He now asked formal permission to enter, and the Directors formally agreed to receive him.

If they thought to find in Lars Larssen a beaten man, they were greatly mistaken. He came in with his usual masterful stride, and his eyes met theirs surely and squarely.

"I've come to hear what's been fixed between you," he said, and took a seat at the table.

Matheson took up a paper from the bundle before him on the table, and replied with studied formality: "The applications for shares totalled 6,714,000 in round figures. Of these, all but 8200 were cancelled by telegram or letter on the morning of May 3rd."

"As a consequence of your advertis.e.m.e.nt in the newspaper?"

"Yes. The Board decided to proceed to allotment, and we have accordingly allotted the applications for 8200 shares. The remainder of the 5,000,000 ordinary shares will have to be taken up and paid for by yourself under the terms of your underwriting agreement."

"I expected that. I'm ready to carry out my bond."

"As you will see," continued Matheson with the same studied formality cloaking the irony of his words, "you gain control."

Larssen smiled tolerantly. "That's turned the trick right enough, but don't flatter yourself that _you_ did it. If it hadn't been for a sheer accident that no man alive could foresee or prevent, I'd have won hands down. I haven't been beaten by _you_, and so I don't bear grudge. And I've no intention of bringing a libel action to gratify your longing for the limelight. I'll just sit tight and let the Hudson Bay scheme flatten out to nothing."

He flicked thumb and forefinger together contemptuously. "That Hudson Bay scheme was chicken-feed. I've bigger than that up my sleeve. What you've done won't put the stopper on me. Let me tell you, Matheson, that it will take a better man than you to down Lars Larssen."

When he left the board-room, all four Directors remained silent. They knew that he had spoken truth. Even in defeat Lars Larssen was a bigger man than any of the four.

From the first, the doctors had little hope of saving Olive. Her const.i.tution, never a strong one, had been undermined by the luxurious pleasure-seeking of her life and the deadly nerve-poison of the morphia.

That night and day on the upturned boat--drenched with the waves, chilled, famished, tortured with thirst--had been an ordeal to shatter even a woman with big reserves of strength, and Olive had no such reserves.

When Matheson and his father-in-law hurried back to Hull, it was to find that life was slowly ebbing. Towards the end her mind cleared of delirium, and she spoke rationally.

"Perhaps it is all for the best, Clifford," she murmured. "You came back to me, but could I have held you?"

"You had come to care for me again," he answered gently.

"Yes, but I am so uncertain. It's my nature. I might have held you for a little while ... and then."

"You must think only of getting well again," he urged.

"Don't try to buoy me up with false hopes. It is kind of you, dear; but I see things clearly now.... You came back to me, and I am content. I want rest now--just rest."

Presently her eyelids closed in sleep. Matheson sat watching by her bedside for a long while, holding her hand. She stirred once and murmured drowsily, "You came back to me." And in her sleep she pa.s.sed away so gradually that none could say when mortal life had ended and the life eternal had begun.

EPILOGUE

In the spring of the following year, Clifford and Elaine were on their wedding journey to Italy. He had rented a sea-coast villa on the Ligurian Riviera, and they were travelling to there from Paris.

It was late at night when the Rome express set them down at their destination. The sea was booming eerily against the rock-wall of the tiny harbour of Santa Margherita, crowded with lateen-sailed fis.h.i.+ng craft silhouetted as a tangle of masts and ropes.

But the morning showed a cloudless sky and suns.h.i.+ne dancing on the blue waters of the Gulf of Tigullio. They walked together to the tiny fis.h.i.+ng village of Portofino, along the most beautiful road in Italy. To the one side the azure sea was lapping to their feet soft messages of welcome, and to the other the olives and the pastel pines were crowding down the hillsides to wish them joy and happiness.

They climbed together through a grey-green veil of olive-orchards, past the little white Noah's Ark houses of the olive farmers and their quaint little Noah's ark cypresses, to the full height of Portofino Kulm, where the whole enchanted coast-line of the Riviera from Genoa to Sestri Levante lay spread out as a jewelled fringe of ocean. Elaine stood hatless while the wanton breeze caressed her glorious hair and caught at her skirts with careless familiarity.

She threw her arms wide as she cried joyously to Clifford: "Just to be able to _see_ all this!"

"Thanks to Dr Hegelmann."

"I'm glad your work is for science. Some day you'll be able to give to others in return for what science has given to me."

"Indeed I hope so."

"For a month I claim you for myself," continued Elaine. "You and I alone.... Then I'll share you with your work--your big work. You and I and your work!"

=Methuen's s.h.i.+lling Library=

BLUE BIRD, THE. Maurice Maeterlinck.

CHARLES d.i.c.kENS. G. K. Chesterton.

CHARMIDES, AND OTHER POEMS. Oscar Wilde.

CHITRaL: The Story of a Minor Siege. Sir G. S. Robertson.

CONDITION OF ENGLAND, THE. G. F. G. Masterman.

DE PROFUNDIS. Oscar Wilde.

FROM MIDs.h.i.+PMAN TO FIELD-MARSHAL. Sir Evelyn Wood, F.M., V.C.