The Gap in the Curtain

profit must be handsome.

'So we started bargaining,' Tavanger continued, 'and I ran him up to eighty shillings. There he stuck his toes into the ground, and not an inch could I induce him to budge. I assume that that figure was the limit of his instructions, and that he'd have to cable for fresh ones. He'll get them, I have no doubt. We've to meet again when he comes back from Paris.'

'It seems to me an enormous price,' I said. 'In a few months you've forced the shares up from under par to four pounds. If it was my show I should be content with that.'

'I want five pounds!' he said firmly. 'That is the figure I fixed in my mind when I first took up the business, and I mean to have it.'

He saw a doubt in my eye and went on. 'I'm not asking anything un-reasonable. Anatilla must have their merger, and in a year or two Daphnes will be worth more than five pounds to them—not to everybody, but to them. My terms are moderation itself compared with what Brock asked and got for his tin-pot railway in the Central Pacific merger, or Assher for his rotten newspaper. I'm giving solid value for the money.

You should see Greenlees' reports. He says there is enough michelite in prospect to supply every steel plant on earth for a century.'

We smoked afterwards in the library, and I noticed a sheaf of plans on the table. Tavanger's eye followed mine.

'Yes, that's the lay-out for the new clinic. We mean to start building in the autumn.'

5

Chapter

I was in my chambers, dictating an opinion, when my clerk brought me Tavanger's card. I had seen or heard nothing of him since that dinner at his house, and the financial columns of the press had been silent about michelite. All I had noticed was a slight rise in Anatilla shares owing to the acquisition of Rosas, the news of which had been officially published in America. Bronson Jane seemed to be still in England, judging from the press, and he had been pointed out to me on the other side of the table at a City dinner. It was a fine June evening, and I was just about to stretch my legs by strolling down to the House.

'The weather tempted me to walk home,' said Tavanger, when I had dismissed my clerk and settled him in my only armchair, 'and it suddenly occurred to me that I might catch you here. Can you give me ten minutes? I've a lot to tell you.'

'It's all over? You've won, of course,' I said. His air was so cheerful that it must mean victory.

He laughed—not ironically, or ruefully, but with robust enjoyment.

Tavanger had certainly acquired a pleasant boyishness from this enterprise.

'On the contrary,' he said, 'I have found my Waterloo. I have abdic-ated and am in full retreat.'

I could only stare.

'What on earth went wrong?' I stammered. 'Who was your Wellington?'

'My Wellington?' he repeated. 'Yes, that's the right question to ask. I struck a Wellington who was not my match perhaps, but he had the big battalions behind him. It wasn't Bronson Jane. I had him in a cleft stick. It was a lad who was raised, I believe, in a Montana shack.'

Then he told me the story. Sprenger had been under agreement with Anatilla to communicate to them from time to time the data on which he was busy. To these Glaubsteins had turned on their own research department, and they had put in charge of it a very brilliant young metallurgical chemist called Untermeyer. He had been working on michelite for the better part of two years, chiefly the problems of a simpler and more economical method of smelting. Well, as luck would have it, he stumbled on the missing link in the process which poor Sprenger had been searching for—had an inkling of it, said Tavanger with awe in his tone, just after Sprenger's death, and proved it beyond a peradventure on the very night when Bronson Jane had dined in Kensington Palace Gardens. Jane's cable for permission to make a higher bid for the Daphne shares was answered by a message which put a very different complexion on the business.

Glaubsteins had lost no time. They had cabled to take out provisional patents in every country in the world, and they had opened up negotiations with the chief American steel interests. There could be no doubt about the success of the new process. Even in its present form it brought down smelting costs by half, and it was doubtless capable of improve-ment. Michelite, instead of being a commodity with a restricted market, would soon have a world-wide use, and those who controlled michelite would reap a rich harvest.

Michelite plus the new patented process. That was the whole point.

The process had been thoroughly proven, and Tavanger said that there was no doubt that it could be fully protected by patents. The steel firms would work under a licence from Glaubsteins, and one of the terms of such a licence would be that they took their michelite from Anatilla. The steel industry on one side became practically a tied-house for Glaubsteins, and Daphne was left in the cold.

'It's a complete knock-out,' said Tavanger. 'Our lower mining costs and our purer quality, which enabled us to cut the price, don't signify at all. They are all washed out by the huge reduction in smelting costs under the new process. Nobody's going to buy an ounce of our stuff any more. It's quite true that if michelite gets into general use Glaubsteins will want our properties. But they can afford to wait and starve us out.

They have enough to go on with in the Anatilla and Rosas mines. There never was a prettier calling of a man's bluff.'

I asked what he had done.

'Chucked in my hand. It was the only course. Bronson Jane was quite decent about it. He gave me par for my Daphne shares, which was far better than I could have hoped. Also, he agreed to my condition about keeping on Greenlees in the management. I am only about twenty thousand pounds to the bad, and I've had a lot of sport for my money. Funny to think that three weeks ago I could have got out of Daphne with a cool profit of one hundred and forty thousand.'

'I am sorry about the clinic,' I said.

'You needn't be,' was the answer. 'I mean to present it just the same.

This very afternoon I approved the final plans. It will be provided for out of my 'gambling fund,' according to my practice. I shall sell my Vermeer to pay for it … It's a clinic for looking after children's teeth, but in the cir- cumstances it would have been more appropriate if it had been for looking after their eyes. The gift is a sacrifice to the gods in token of my own blindness.'

Tavanger had suddenly become serious.

'I think you guessed all along that I saw something that morning at Flambard. Well, I did, and I believed in it. I saw the announcement of the world-merger arranged by Anatilla. That is to say, I knew with perfect certainty that one thing was going to happen. If I hadn't known it, if I had gone in for Daphnes as an ordinary speculation, I would have been content to take my profit at two or three or four pounds. As it is, that infernal atom of accurate knowledge has cost me twenty thousand.

'But it was worth it,' he added, getting up and reaching for his hat,

'for I have learned one thing which I shall never forget, and which I commend to your notice. Our ignorance of the future has been wisely ordained of Heaven. For unless man were to be like God and know everything, it is better that he should know nothing. If he knows one fact only, instead of profiting by it he will assuredly land in the soup.'

Part 3

THE RT. HON. DAVID MAYOT

'I once did see

In my young travels through Armenia,

An angrie Unicorne in his full carier

Charge with too swift a foot a Jeweller,

That watcht him for the Treasure of his browe;

And ere he could get shelter of a tree,

Naile him with his rich Antler to the Earth.'

GEORGE CHAPMAN, Bussy D'Ambois.