The Strode Venturer

by Hammond Innes

  In the end we had lunch together for we were still under the old man’s spell, feeling ourselves drawn together by the web of circumstance.

  “Where’s Peter now, do you think?”

  “God knows!” For all I knew the Strode Venturer might be lying broken against the laval side of some newly erupted island. But I couldn’t help feeling that Peter was too live, too vital a man to get sunk without trace before he’d had time to get to grips with the world his father had bequeathed him. She must have felt this, too, for all she said was, “I hope he doesn’t make a fool of himself.” We had finished the meal and she was sitting facing me, smoking a cigarette and sipping her coffee. “I want you to promise me something. See that he doesn’t do just that. Like me, he can be terribly impulsive. He does things on the spur of the moment. He once told me all his travelling was on the spur of the moment. Somebody in a bar, a ship in a harbour, the signpost beckoning. He doesn’t plan. He acts. That’s why you’ve been left those shares. The old dear knows Peter’s weakness.” She smiled at me, a humorous gleam in her eyes. “You’re my brother’s keeper now. D’you realize that?”

  I didn’t, of course—not then. I didn’t know him well enough to realize he needed one. But she did, and so did the old lawyer. It was only later, much later, that I came to understand the crazy streak in him. It wasn’t a question of instability so much as a certain theatrical quality in his make-up. His was a volatile, flamboyant nature feeding on excitement, carried away by his enthusiasm, his delight in the grand gesture. I was cast in the role of ground tackle, an anchor to keep him from wrecking himself.

  “Read that,” George Strode said, reaching across his desk to hand me a letter. It was the following morning and the letter was from the Admiralty. The Strode Venturer was apparently safe. She had returned to Addu Atoll on 14th April short of fuel and had requested permission from the naval officer in charge of the Wave Victor to bunker for the voyage to Aden. In the circumstances there appeared no alternative but to accede to the request, particularly as it was made by a director of Strode & Coy. We would point out, however, that the Wave Victor is anchored at Addu Atoll for the refuelling of naval vessels. It is not to be regarded as providing a bunkering service for commercial vessels and you are warned that in the future … The final paragraph read: In view of the threat to life constituted by your failure to provide sufficient fuel for this vessel kindly forward by return a full report as to the reasons why the Strode Venturer could not make Aden without recourse to Admiralty bunkering facilities.

  “Well, what do I say to that?” George Strode demanded. “Is Peter quite out of his mind? The chief engineer, Brady, must have warned him about the fuel situation. To sub-charter the ship and take her off for a joy-ride round the Indian Ocean knowing damn’ well he couldn’t reach Aden …” His words, tumbling over themselves, were choked by anger. “Do you know the man who wrote that letter?”

  I glanced at the signature. “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Well, you know the form. Draft a reply—the usual thing, full inquiry, disciplinary action, and bring it down to me for signature. That should satisfy them.” And he added, “The Strode Venturer is due in Aden on Saturday. And I’ve just had confirmation that Peter’s still on board. I’ve cabled Simpkin to get him on a plane the moment the ship docks. I’d like a full report on his activities from you before I see him on Monday morning.”

  But it wasn’t until the Tuesday that he arrived, and then quite unexpectedly. About four in the afternoon he came bursting into my office lugging an old duffel-bag. He heaved it up on to my desk and the mouth of it fell open, pouring a cascade of those manganese nodules into my lap. “Well, there you are—the first consignment.” He glanced round my office. “Why did they shove you up here? I barged in on a languid young man downstairs—acres of carpet and about a dozen pictures all to himself.”

  “That’s John,” I said. “Henry Strode’s son. He acts as P.A. to his father.” I had moved the duffel-bag on to the floor and was clearing the stuff from my desk. “So you found the island.”

  “I suppose you could call it an island, yes. It was the bed of the Indian Ocean really.” He’d come straight from the airport, his tropical suit still rumpled from the journey, but he didn’t seem tired and he wanted to talk. “Never seen anything like it. All grey slime and weed and the empty cases of shellfish, and stinking like a dirty harbour at low water.” The description, the atmosphere of the place came pouring out of him compulsively, leaving me with the impression of a dark whale shape about three miles by two, a dead decaying mass from the ocean depths lying stranded in a flat calm oily swell a thousand miles from anywhere. He had seen the manganese lying exposed in drifts like banks of black metallic shingle. And here and there were outcrops of the basalt from which the nodules had been leached by the sea’s action. But most of the island was overlaid by sediment, a grey slime baking under a blazing hot sun. He wouldn’t tell me where the island was. “It’s way off any steamer track, clear of the flight path of any plane.”

  “Volcanic?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “In origin—yes, I suppose so. Sometimes, when the wind was southerly, the air became sulphurous as though gases were seeping out of some submarine rectum. But there was no vent on the island. I haven’t walked it all, but you can see most of it for it’s nowhere more than fifty feet high and damned difficult to approach, though we found deep water on the western side.”

  “Any picture of it?” I was thinking it would help when it came to putting a scheme up to his fellow directors. But he hadn’t had a camera with him. Nor had any of the crew. “Just as well,” he said. “We don’t want anyone else out there searching for it.” He seemed to have forgotten about the ship’s officers.

  “They must have known what you were up to, bringing off samples.”

  He laughed. “They were scared stiff, most of them. There’s a damned queer atmosphere about a hunk of land that’s just emerged from the sea. Geology isn’t their business and anyway they thought I was crazy.”

  “But they know where it is and they’ll talk.”

  “They’ll talk, yes. But you’re wrong—they don’t know where it is. There were only two sextants on board besides my own and I got hold of those before we sailed. As soon as we were in the area—I had Don Mansoor with me and his reckoning of its position was a little vague—I started a square search. You know how confusing that can be unless you’re plotting it yourself. And I saw to it that nobody else kept a track chart.” He had seated himself on the edge of my desk and was toying with one of the ore pieces. A strange smell of the sea and of decay had invaded my office. “If we follow this up—get out there quick …” He stared down at the lava-like substance he held in his hand. “There’s shiploads of this stuff there—millions of tons of it for the taking. With a surplus of shipping and the eastern countries taking over our traditional cargoes it’d make a difference to have our own freight source, wouldn’t it? And nobody owns the island. An opportunity like this comes only once in a lifetime….”

  He was still sporting that little French beard and with his skin tanned to the colour of old teak and his eyes alight with excitement he looked very strange indeed. I thought of the other times I had met him, how on each occasion he had seemed in his element. But here in the City, dressed in a tropical suit.… It was one thing to dream of resuscitating Strode Orient, quite another to convince the directors. Dreams and company balance sheets, the hard facts of money, don’t go easily together.

  I started to tell him this, but he brushed the difficulties aside. “Even my brothers must see the possibilities. It’s so damned obvious.” And he went on: “I don’t just bring back a bag of ore. I had Number Four hold half-filled with the stuff. We were digging it up with shovels and bringing it off in the boats for two solid days.” He laughed. “When we got to Aden, there was our little agent, Simpkin, running up the wall because he’d been told to rush me off by plane and I wouldn’t leave till I’d got samples away to a l
ong list of industrial concerns I’d had prepared back in Singapore. He sacked Deacon, by the way. Did you know that?”

  I nodded. “The instructions were sent over a week ago.”

  “Well, that’s soon put right. And after I’d got the samples off, I had the rest of it transhipped to a freighter bound for the Tyne. Wouldn’t be surprised if I make enough to cover the fuel bills.”

  “That would help,” I said. And I tried to explain to him what the reaction had been at this end. But he was so full of his own plans that he couldn’t conceive of any opposition to them.

  There was a knock at the door and Elliot came in. He stood there for a moment, staring. “Are you Mr. Peter Strode?” He said it with the air of a man forced to make friends with a rattlesnake. And then he added hastily, “Mr. George would like to see you.” He held the door open. “If you’ll follow me, sir.”

  That first meeting with his brother must have opened his eyes to the position, for he came back to my office half an hour later in quite a different mood. “Let’s for God’s sake go and have a drink.

  “They’re not open yet,” I said. “Not in the City.”

  “To hell with the City. We’ll go down West.”

  He left the duffel-bag in my office and we went down the stairs together. “Only been in this place twice before. Always hated it.” He stopped at the head of the main staircase, looking down at the ornate entrance with its glistening chandeliers and marble floor. “Incredible, isn’t it? Modelled on a palazzo in Milan. My father was very fond of baroque. It appealed to the flamboyant side of his nature.” He smiled. “Italian palazzi, Haussman’s Champs-Elysées, the Escorial — anything really big. You never met him, I suppose?”

  “No.”

  He nodded, still smiling. “Just as well, perhaps, you wouldn’t have liked him. He was a man of enormous appetite, egotistical, ruthless—anything he saw he wanted to own. Another twenty years and he’d have got his hands on half the ships in the country.” He gave a little shrug. “I hated him, of course, but that was years ago. Now I understand him better, can appreciate that driving energy of his, that acquisitive, expansive lust for the power that money gives.” His dark hand tightened its grip on the smooth wood of the staircase rail. “This is the first time in my life I ever felt the need of him. He’d have known how to make a thing like this come to life, and he’d have backed me … I’m damned sure he would.”

  “Well, he’s dead now,” I said and there wasn’t much kindness in the way I said it.

  He nodded and started down the stairs. “Yes, he’s dead and brother Henry sits at the desk where he used to sit.” One of the freight department clerks went past us, his eyes almost popping out of his head as he stared at my companion. We reached the portrait of my father and Peter Strode hesitated, glancing at me. Was he checking the likeness or was he considering how I must feel working in this building? I couldn’t be certain, for his eyes were without expression and he didn’t say anything.

  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.