“Ridiculous or not, I won’t take any fee.” There was something very near emotion in the accountant’s voice. “You can pay for having the accounts audited if you like. But beyond that, not a farthing. Hang it all, when you fellows are risking your lives, the least we old ’uns can do is to see after affairs at home for you.”
“It’s damn decent of you,” said Peter, “but all the same, I don’t like accepting favours.”
“Favours be blowed.” Reid lit himself a cigarette. “Let’s get down to facts. First point: Are you quite sure it’s necessary to sell?”
“Why? The business is perfectly solvent.”
“Some one could run it while you’re away.”
“It isn’t that”—Peter spoke coldly, impersonally—“but if anything happened to me there’d be the whole tangle over again. Whereas, if I can get my fourteen thousand out, that _and_ the insurance money, at five per cent. . . .”
“Very well,” interrupted Reid. “I follow you. Point two: Who’s your buyer?”
“A firm called Beresford and Beresford. You’ll find them pretty tough nuts to negotiate with.”
“Jews?” asked Reid, who had a slight acquaintance with the cigar-trade.
“Well that’s one comfort. They won’t mess about. If they want the thing, and the price suits them, they’ll have it. . . .”
Peter had spoken with great certainty about Beresfords; but as he climbed down the prison-like stone staircase of Great Winchester House he began to wonder whether he might not have misjudged the situation. Two and a half years ago, Maurice would have jumped at the opportunity of acquiring Jamesons on the terms Peter now proposed to accept. But things had altered in the cigar-trade; perhaps the arguments he intended using would not be effective.
The whole proposition was very distasteful. He found himself hating the City, almost wishing he were back in the firing-line. And when, through various passages, he made his own offices, distaste deepened. Sitting there, talking generalities to Miss Macpherson (it would be time enough to tell her the business must be sold, after he had seen Maurice), memories thronged over him. He saw his father again, uncording a parcel of dock-samples, old George with his duster, Tom Simpson, himself as a raw youth.
Recollection conjured up many such pictures that morning: comedies, farces, tragedies, all enacted among the cedar-boxes and the mahogany furniture of 28 b. Lime Street.