The Oilfield

by Edgar Wallace

THE OILFIELD

By EDGAR WALLACE

"NO, thank you, Joicey," said the Earl of Mansar for the third time, and the stout, good-looking young man who was his companion began rolling up the large plan with a pained expression.

It was an interesting chart, with parallelograms and rhomboids of pink and green, and he had talked himself hoarse in an endeavour to persuade his sometime comrade into agreement.

"I dare say it is all right," said Mansar, tossing a cigarette into the extended palm of the Honourable Felix Joicey, "and I know that, so far as you are concerned, it is all right. There is a lot of oil in Roumania—though I've never heard that a gusher had gushed in the Doebnitz region—and as likely as not there is a fortune in the proposition."

"There are a dozen fortunes," said the enthusiastic Mr. Joicey, and Lord Mansar nodded.

"I'll take shares, I promise you that," he said, "but I will not join your board. The fact is, Joicey, I hate the crowd who are running the company, and that's flat—they couldn't go straight if they were fired out of a gun."

"Meggison isn't bad," suggested Joicey.

"Meggison isn't as bad as Glion, and that isn't saying much. But if you came to me and offered me a seat in the court of the Bank of England, I wouldn't take it if either of those fellows had an account at the Bank."

Mr. Joicey lit his cigarette and his expression was doleful. He had served with Lord Mansar in the Guards, and had given up his profession as a soldier to enter the Stock Exchange, and had been fairly successful.

"I'm pretty heavily interested in this," he said, puffing his cigarette thoughtfully, "and I don't think you'd run much risk. We want a good name on the board—a name that will impress the small investor. We have to put the property .on the market, for we need big capital."

Lord Mansar drew in his lips and lifted his eyebrows, a grimace which says, "I'm sorry, but I can't help you," in most languages. Then unexpectedly he smiled.

"By Jove!" he said softly.

"What?"

"Do you know the Marquis of Pelborough?"

Mr. Joicey frowned. He knew most of the marquises and not a few of the dukes, but he did not know the Lord of Pelborough.

"Not the fellow whose uncle claimed an extinct peerage—the insurance clerk?" he asked, suddenly remembering.

Mansar nodded.

"That's the fellow. He has been working at the Foreign Office, but that job is finishing, and I'm sure I could persuade him to go on the board. A thousand a year you said?"

Mr. Joicey rubbed both his chins and looked out of the window.

"At the Foreign Office? He must be a pretty smart fellow. Quite a boy, isn't he?"

"He looks young," admitted his lordship, "but he is no fool. He's the cleverest amateur boxer at his weight in England."

Here he touched an ex-heavy-weight public school champion on a tender spot.

"I wonder if I've seen him?" mused Joicey. "The best of the light-weights is a lad I saw box at the Polytechnic gym. He beat young Herberts, the Eton middle-weight, and gave him ten pounds. 'Chick,' they call him."

Lord Mansar's eyes glistened.

"That's the fellow. Now, be a sportsman, Felix, and shove him on your board. Glion will fall on the neck of a real live marquis."

"I'll think about it," said Joicey.

Late in the evening, when Mansar was dressing for dinner, he learnt by telephone that the promoters had agreed, a piece of information which gave him a double pleasure, since it offered him the opportunity of breaking the news. And he was not thinking of Chick when he sighed.

The Marquis of Pelborough was sitting in his shirt-sleeves, playing dominoes with his housekeeper, when Lord Mansar's rat-tat at the street-door sent him in hasty search after his discarded coat. Gwenda was in her room, answering a letter which she had received from her late manager, asking her to return to the part she had dropped. Gwenda had a brother, now happily in Canada and unlikely to return, a blackmailing, weak, and conscienceless man, who had dogged her footsteps through life and had brought to a summary conclusion at least three good engagements. With his passing there had been lifted from her heart a heavy load which she had borne in secret almost as long as she could remember.

A tap at her door, and Mrs. Phibbs came in.

"Lord Mansar?" said Gwenda, in dismay. The least cause for her embarrassment was her unreadiness to meet a visitor at that hour. Mansar's attentions had been marked, and whilst she did not doubt either his sincerity or his honesty, it was distressing to her to find a man she liked very much developing, against her will and wish, another relationship.

"I was on my way to dinner," apologised his lordship, "and I thought you would not mind my calling in to tell you my news."

"Chick has some news also," smiled the girl ruefully. "His work is ending at the Foreign Office."

Lord Mansar nodded.

"I know," he said; "Sir John told me a few days ago. He's tremendously well satisfied with you, Pelborough."

"I suppose he is, sir," said Chick a little glumly. "I was wondering whether the letter I carried to Madrid——"

"He is perfectly well satisfied with you," said Mansar, "but the man whose place you filled is returning from Egypt. Welson has put your name down for the next vacancy, and I think you could be sure of having a permanent appointment. But I think we can do better than that." He smiled, and gave the gist of his conversation with Joicey.

"And they have accepted you, Pelborough. I think it will be a good thing for you."

Chick's face did not display any particular enthusiasm.

"I am rather scared of it," he said, shaking his head. "I don't know what directors do, and I know nothing whatever about oil. Besides, it almost seems as though I were becoming a guinea-pig director."

Lord Mansar was startled.

"You're a queer fellow, Pelborough. I should not have thought that you knew what a guinea-pig director was."

Chick smiled in self-depreciation.

"You hear so many things in the City," he said, excusing his own intelligence.

"But if you think, Lord Mansar, that I shan't make a fool of myself, and it is a job that I ought to take, I'm most grateful to you for suggesting it."

Mansar was just a little disappointed. Chick disappointed so many people who were misled by his simplicity into believing that he was mentally deficient. He gave them the same shock that the modern child administers to its parents, for Chick was neither dazed nor impressed by the mechanical toys of life, and saw, through the tin and the paint, the curled spring which worked them. There is nothing quite so disconcerting as this, and Lord Mansar might be pardoned his twinge of annoyance when Chick received the news of his excellent appointment with such sang-froid.

In truth. Chick was too alarmed to be impressed, and too overwhelmed by the view of this strange land which he must prospect to be enthusiastic. Gwenda went down to the door with their visitor. She was conscious of the chilling effect of Chick's lugubrious face.

"You have been wonderful to Lord Pelborough," she said, "and please don't think that he isn't very grateful. Chick gets so overburdened by these opportunities which you give him that he is not quite——"

"I know—I understand," said Lord Mansar, with a laugh. "I always forget that these jobs which a man like myself, who has never felt the need of a job, would accept so light-heartedly must be almost paralysing to a fellow like Chick. Besides, I am more than rewarded for any service I have given," he said meaningly.

He took her hand and held it a while, so long that she gently withdrew it. There was an awkward silence as they stood on the doorstep, then Lord Mansar blurted:

"Mrs. Maynard, would you think I was very rude if I asked you a personal question?"

"I can't imagine you being very rude," she smiled.

"Is your husband dead?"

She shook her head.

"Are you divorced?"

Again she shook her head.

"And is there any prospect of your being divorced?"

"No, Lord Mansar," she said quietly, and he held out his hand again.

"I'm sorry," he said, and Gwenda went upstairs feeling a brute.

Chick received his introduction to Mr. Glion the next morning at ten o'clock. The place of meeting was a large bare-looking room, furnished with a long table and half a dozen mahogany chairs. On the distempered walls were four big charts framed in oak, and these, with a carpet on the floor, constituted the contents of the room—with this reservation, that Mr. Bertram Glion was in himself both a furnishing and a decoration. He was an immensely stout man, who emphasised and underlined his rotundity by his passion for vivid waistcoats. They were invariably of silk, and usually figured fantastically.

Mr. Glion told his intimate friends with pride that he designed them himself, a handsome admission that the responsibility was not to be put elsewhere. His face was very broad and very red. It could on occasions be crimson, and here Nature had emphasised his high colour by endowing him with a small, white moustache and a pair of snowy eyebrows.

He was a very rich man, who had built up his fortune on the faith of a large number of shareholders, who were in consequence very poor.

The relationship between Mr. Glion and his shareholders is best illustrated by an hour-glass. Place the hour-glass in its correct position, and there is only room for sand at one end. In his philosophy there was no place in the world for rich shareholders and rich company promoters. One or the other had to acquire wealth, and it was Mr. Glion's design that he should be the one.

He sat at the farther end of the table, in a large, padded and comfortable chair, and on his right, less comfortably placed, was his friend and partner, John Meggison. Meggison could be described as a faded gentleman. Almost all the attributes of his gentility had faded just a little. He was a long-faced, taciturn man, who wore pince-nez and spoke with a certain preciousness. His worn and wearied expression may have been due to the fact that he had spent his maturity in a vain endeavour to adapt his sense of honour to the exigencies of Mr. Glion's business.

Mr. Glion pushed back his chair and rose breathlessly to his feet as Chick was shown in.

"Lord Pelborough, eh? Yes." He looked at Chick and said "Yes" again.

Mr. Meggison also looked at Chick and shook his head slightly. It was intended to be a signal to his partner that Chick would not do. It was one of his illusions that Mr. Glion was influenced by his judgment.

"Yes," said Mr. Glion again. "Sit down, Lord Pelborough."

Five minutes later Mr. Glion was waddling round the room with a long pointer, explaining to Chick, by means of the charts, maps and plans which hung on the wall, the potentialities of the Doebnitz oilfields. They were joined a little later by Mr. Joicey, who made up in enthusiasm all that he lacked in experience, and by lunch-time the four directors of Doebnitz Oil were seated about a table at Mr. Glion's flat.

Chick came home to tea a very preoccupied young man, and hung up his tall hat, looking so sad and depressed that Gwenda was alarmed.

"Are you disappointed, Chick?" she said.

Chick rubbed his nose and looked at her blankly.

"Eh?" he said, rousing himself with a start. "I'm awfully sorry, Gwenda. Am I disappointed? No, I'm not disappointed, except with myself. It is such an enormous business, Gwenda. There's a million pounds being invested in the company, and my name is going on the prospectus, and I've nothing to do except to go to the office once a month."

She shook him gently by the shoulder.

"My dear soul, there are lots of people who would give their heads to get that kind of position."

"I suppose they would," said Chick dubiously. "But, Gwenda, do you know anything about oil?"

"Do I know anything about it?" she said in surprise. "No, of course I don't; but you needn't be an authority on oil to be a director of an oil company."

"I suppose not," said Chick.

He had a subscription to a library, and returned the next day with a number of volumes under his arm. Gwenda, reading their titles and noting that they all dealt with oil and its production, marvelled a little. She was beginning to understand Chick, and to know that behind that appealing helplessness of his was a very definite strength of purpose. The courage which had brought him again and again to the centre of the ring to take punishment from the hands of a man who he knew must surely defeat him, but which nevertheless held him doggedly to the end, was exactly the courage which made him spend three days and nights in the quietness of his bedroom confirming a suspicion which had been born of a quick glance between Glion and his partner.

It was during the luncheon, and Mr. Joicey was speculating upon the dividends which this undeveloped oilfield would pay. It was a glint from eye to eye that Chick saw, but it was enough.

A week passed, and he had exhausted the subject of oil, and had exchanged his books for the only geological survey of Roumania procurable. It was a small book, but it was in German, and for another three days Chick sat hunched up with a German-English dictionary by his side, puzzling over the queer Gothic characters and making elaborate notes in his sprawling hand.

The prospectus had been issued with what seemed to Lord Mansar to be indecent haste, and at the first board meeting which Chick attended Mr. Glion announced that subscriptions were "rolling in." Glion, who had seen the birth and death of innumerable companies, and had a very large experience of guinea-pig directors, drove to his handsome house in Hans Crescent after the meeting, and he was in a boiling rage.

"What is this fellow they've lumbered on to me?" he stormed to the meek Meggison. "The man is an infernal jackass. By Jove, for two pins I'd chuck him off the board!"

"He's young," murmured Mr. Meggison.

"Young be—blowed!" exploded Mr. Glion. "Business which ought to have taken us ten minutes he kept us fooling about with until six o'clock! Did you notice how he insisted upon reading the engineer's report? Did you hear what he said about the purchase price and who was getting the money?"

"He's very young," murmured Mr. Meggison.

"Young!" spluttered the rotund Mr. Glion. "He's got Joicey dissatisfied, and I'm depending upon Joicey to work the market."

At that moment Mr. Joicey, no longer enthusiastic, was walking with a gloomy Chick along the Thames Embankment. Chick's tall hat was on the back of his head, and his hands were thrust into his trousers pockets.

"You know a devil of a lot about oil!" said Joicey testily, for a man resents the disturbance of his placid optimism. "Where did you learn it all?"

"I read it up," said Chick.

"Oh, in books," said Mr. Joicey contemptuously.

"Yes," said Chick, "in books. Books told you there was such a place as Roumania. You've never been there, have you?"

Mr. Joicey admitted he hadn't.

"You made Glion awfully wild," he said, after they had walked a few minutes in silence.

"Did I?" said Chick indifferently. "That's the fat red man, isn't it?"

"That's him," said the product of a great public school. "You rattled him a bit about the purchase price. Five hundred thousand pounds isn't too much to pay, if the property is anything like what I think it is."

Chick grunted.

"Who gets the money?" he asked, after a while.

"The Southern Oil Syndicate," answered Mr. Joicey uneasily, for he knew that the Southern Oil Syndicate was another name for Mr. Glion and Mr. Meggison.

They parted at the point where the one-decker trams dive into a dark tunnel and climb their way up to Southampton Row, and at parting Chick dropped his bombshell.

"I don't think there is any oil in that property," he said. "Good-bye, Mr. Joicey."

He left the young man staring after him.

A fortnight later came another report from the engineer in charge of the boring operations, which Mr. Glion received philosophically.

"Of course he must put down another borehole, gentlemen," he said. "It is very disappointing, very." He passed his hand wearily across his forehead. "Others will reap the reward of our labours," he said virtuously. "We may not get oil for a month, or two months, or two years, but sooner or later our enterprise will be justified. We will now pass to the next item on the agenda."

"Wait a minute," said Chick. "In the prospectus you said——"

"Any discussion of the prospectus is out of order," said Mr. Glion in his capacity as chairman. "We will now pass to the next business."

The following afternoon Chick received a wire asking him to call at Hans Crescent. Mr. Glion was ill. He was very ill. In proof of which, there he was in his bed, dressed in resplendent pyjamas, which in all probability he had designed in the odd moments when he was not designing waistcoats.

"My doctor has told me to give up work at once," he said. "Sit down, Pelborough. Let them bring you some tea. Or will you have a whisky and soda?"

Chick would take neither.

Mr. Glion had not achieved success without a profound knowledge of human nature, and Chick listened fascinated whilst the white moustache wobbled up and down as Mr. Glion outlined his plan.

"I am getting a bit too old for this, Pelborough," he said. "Here, at the zenith of my career, I have the most wonderful proposition that any financier has ever handled, and Anno Domini has floored me! This company requires the direction of young men, full of the vigour of youth. You understand me?"

Chick nodded, wondering what was coming next.

"I have been talking it over with Meggison," Mr. Glion went on, "and we have decided to stand on one side and let you boys run the company."

"But—but——" stammered Chick.

"One moment." Mr. Glion raised his hand with a pained expression. "This is not a question of doing you a favour, my friend. I must be justified. People are watching the ravaging effect of—er—Anno Domini, as I said before, and are chuckling up their sleeves. They think I will fail, but they do not know that I have at my right hand and at my left"—he gesticulated picturesquely toward the window and in the direction of a Louis Seize cabinet—"two young geniuses—should that be genii? I am rather hazy on the subject—who will carry the Doebnitz Oilfields to triumphant success."

And then he outlined his scheme, and Chick listened open-mouthed.

Mr Glion had a hundred thousand shares. Chick had exactly five hundred, which had been presented to him to qualify him for the directorship. He would hand his shares over to Chick at a nominal figure, "say, a shilling—or even sixpence," suggested Mr. Glion, watching the young man's face, and was immediately afterwards sorry that he hadn't said half-a-crown.

And Joicey should become managing director and Chick chairman of the board. It is doubtful whether Chick would have fallen in with this arrangement if he had read the scathing article in a respectable financial paper that morning. Joicey had read it, and was indignant when he came in answer to Chick's wire urgent. They met in the bare board-room in Queen Victoria Street, and Joicey's enthusiasm carried the day. The next morning they received the transfer of two hundred thousand shares which had been held by Mr. Glion and the philanthropic Mr. Meggison, and, constituting themselves into a board, they accepted and acknowledged the resignation of the former chairman and managing director.

And then the trouble began. For months afterwards Chick never saw a financial newspaper without shutting his eyes and shivering. He leapt in a night to the eminence of a public character, and a bad character at that. An independent report of the Doebnitz property had reached London, and it was less flattering than the engineer's. The post-box was filled with the letters of anguished and despairing shareholders who had already paid fifteen shillings on every one pound share, and Chick felt that he would grow grey unless something happened.

There was an informal meeting in the little sitting-room at Doughty Street, and to Gwenda's surprise Lord Mansar attended.

"I've been trying to get you all day, Chick," he said. "You can't imagine how sick I am that I have let you into this swindle."

Mr. Joicey, looking unusually haggard and baggy about the eyes, for he had had no sleep for three nights, put down the newspaper cuttings he had been reading with a groan.

"Well, you were right, Mansar," he said. "The infernal scoundrels! They have left us to hold the baby."

"I'll come on the board," began Mansar.

"No, you won't," said Chick quietly. "We've got into this trouble through our own stupidity, and we've got to get out as best we can. It doesn't affect me, because——"

"It affects you more than anybody," said Mansar quietly. "You are just making your start, Pelborough, and I thought it was a good start for you. It is going to be very bad for you to be associated with a swindle of this kind, and I hate myself for putting you into it."

"Is there no money in the company?" asked Gwenda, who was the fourth about the little table.

"That's the swindle of it!" said Joicey savagely. "There's over one hundred and fifty thousand pounds in the bank, and Pelborough and I have full control of it. It was the money in the bank that was the lure. The business looked so solvent that we didn't hesitate, did we, Pelborough?"

Chick said nothing. He had done a considerable amount of hesitating, but had been over-persuaded by his volatile companion.

"But I thought the capital was a million," said the girl.

It was Mansar who explained to her the mysteries of high finance—of shares allocated in lieu of purchase price, of money actually paid out to vendors.

"Mr. Glion has his whack," said Chick. "I wonder if we could get it back?"

Joicey laughed.

"Could you get back a lump of sugar that had been standing in a cup of hot tea for ten minutes?" he asked. "Could you extract the ink you dropped on blotting-paper? No, you'll never get anything back from Glion, The beggar isn't even insurable," he said bitterly, "otherwise we could get a policy on his life and kill him!"

"He isn't a good life," said Chick, shaking his head, his mind reverting to the days of his insurance clerkship. "I think he would come under Schedule H."

The discussion ended, as all previous discussions had finished, without any definite plan being evolved. Indeed, there was no other plan than the liquidation of the company.

More satisfactory were the little talks which Mr. Glion had with his confederate. They occurred in a room panelled in rosewood and illuminated by soft lights that shone through Venetian glass, lights that were fixed in solid silver brackets, for Mr. Glion's study had been arranged by a well-known firm of decorators and furnishers, and he had wisely refrained from putting forward those suggestions as to colour and shape which had made his waistcoats famous throughout the City of London.

"They seem to be in trouble," said Mr. Glion, as he sipped a long glass of Moselle. "Did you see The Financial Echo this morning?"

"They weren't exactly nice about us," said Mr. Meggison in his pedantic way.

"The things they say about that boy Pelborough——" Mr. Glion shook with internal laughter. "There is such a thing in this world, my dear fellow," he said, as he poured himself another libation, "as being too clever. It has been my experience that when you have dealings with a fellow who thinks he knows it all, you are on a good soft proposition."

There came a discreet tap at the door, and his butler entered, carrying a salver.

"A telegram?" said Mr. Glion, adjusting his glasses.

He opened the buff envelope and extracted two forms filled with writing.

Mr. Meggison, watching him read, saw first a look of astonishment and then a broad smile dawn slowly on his face.

"There is no answer," he said to the waiting servant, and chuckled, and his chuckle became a laugh so punctured with coughing that his companion was seriously alarmed.

"When you are dealing with a fellow who thinks he is clever," repeated Mr. Glion, when he had recovered his breath, "you are on something for nothing."

He tossed the telegram across to the other, and Mr. Meggison read:

"We have struck oil at 220 metres, a fine gusher. Evidently oil lies very deeply here. The prospects are splendid. All the local authorities are surprised that we have found oil at all."

It was signed "Merrit."

"What the dickens does that mean?" asked Mr. Meggison, surprised, and his friend began to laugh again.

"I will tell you what that means," he began, when again the door opened to admit the butler.

"There's a telephone call through for you, sir, from the Marquis of Pelborough. Will you speak to him?"

"Switch him through," said Mr. Glion, his face creased with good humour.

He winked at the puzzled Mr. Meggison.

"Lost no time, has he?" he chuckled. "Hand that telephone across to me, will you, Meggison?

It was Chick's voice that greeted him.

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Glion indulgently. "How do you do, Lord Pelborough? Yes, I've read the papers. … I'm very sorry. … No, I'm out of that business for good. The state of my health makes it imperative that I should rest, and my doctor has forbidden me to interest myself in any company at all. … Buy back the shares and take control? Nonsense! … You wait, my boy, for a year or two. You'll have wonderful news from Roumania yet."

He winked again at the other, and was unable to proceed for a moment.

"Oh, yes, you bought them all right," he said, answering the anxious inquiry. "The fact that you and Joicey haven't paid for them makes no difference. You owe us exactly five thousand pounds. That's exactly two hundred thousand shares at sixpence. No, we're not going to press you for payment."

He listened, shaking his head, whilst the sound of Chick's urgent voice reached Mr. Meggison at the other side of the table.

"I'm sorry. Good night."

He hung up the receiver.

"That is one of the most transparent tricks in the world," he said.

The 'phone rang again. He hesitated for a moment, then reached for the instrument.

"Oh, is that you, Pelborough? No, I'm sure Mr. Meggison wouldn't come back under any circumstances. He's not well at all. And by the way, Pelborough, where is Joicey now?. In Roumania, is he?" He grinned broadly. "Thank you, that is all I wanted to know."

He put the receiver down.

"As I was saying, that is one of the most transparent tricks, and it has been played on me before, but never, I am happy to say, with success. The wire was sent by Joicey, of course."

"Why should he send it here and not to the office? That exposes the fake," said Mr. Meggison.

"Not necessarily," corrected Glion. "Merrit has had orders to send his wires direct here. No, no"—he held up his glass and admired its amber contents—"they oughtn't to have tried it on an old bird like me."

Mr. Glion came down to breakfast the next morning in his most amiable mood. He might have continued the day in that cheerful frame of mind, but for a paragraph in the stop-press column of the financial paper.

"Valuable finds of oil have been made on the property of the Doebnitz Oil Company."

This puzzled him, and it shook his faith in his own judgment. That faith was entirely dissipated in the afternoon when the figures at his club showed Doebnitz Oil at seventeen shillings a share and rising.

Mr. Glion was a man of resource and ingenuity. Ten minutes after reading the staggering information which the tape machine supplied, he descended from a taxi at the door of the office in Queen Victoria Street and went up to the board-room. He passed through the outer office, where three clerks were busy opening telegrams from shareholders, cancelling their offers to sell, and discovered Chick sitting in solitary state in that same luxurious chair which had been Mr. Glion's. Chick beamed up at the visitor, and Mr. Glion ordered his face to smile.

"Well, well, my boy," he said, and offered a plump and purple hand, "you see I've come as I promised."

The smile left Chick's face.

"As you promised, sir?" he said.

Mr. Glion nodded and sat down.

"As we agreed over the 'phone," he said. "I have come to buy back the shares you offered me, and very handsome it was of you, my boy. I promise you that you shall not lose on the transaction."

"I've promised myself that, too, sir," said Chick gently.

"Have you the transfers ready?" asked Mr. Glion, searching for his fountain pen.

"No, sir—and I am not selling."

The rotund Mr. Glion quivered with surprise and indignation.

"What, sir! After we had agreed that I should take over your stock?"

Chick walked to the door and opened it wide.

"Good evening, sir," he said politely.

One of Mr. Glion's greatest assets was an ability to recognise defeat.