A Dangerous Fortune (1994)

by Ken Follett

  The smell of blood became nauseating. All the dogs in the room barked madly, and the spectators added to the noise, the women shrieking to see the carnage and the men shouting encouragement to the dog or to the rats. Micky laughed and laughed.

  It took a moment for the rats to discover they were trapped in the pit. Some ran around the edge, looking for a way out; others jumped up, trying without success to get a grip on the sheer sides; others formed themselves into a heap. For a few seconds the dog had it all his own way, and killed a dozen or more.

  Then the rats turned, all at once, as it they had heard a signal. They began to fly at the dog, biting his legs, his haunches and his short tail. Some got on his back and bit his neck and ears, and one sank its sharp little teeth into his lower lip and clung on, swinging from his lethal jaws, until he howled with rage and slammed it against the ground, and at last it released his bleeding flesh.

  The dog kept turning around in dizzying circles and caught rat after rat, killing them all; but there were always more behind him. Half the rats were dead when he began to tire. The people who had bet on thirty-six, and got long odds, now tore up their slips; but those who had bet on lower numbers cheered louder.

  The dog was bleeding from twenty or thirty bites, and the ground became slippery with his blood and the moist corpses of the dead rats. Still he swung his great head; still he cracked their brittle spines in his terrible mouth; but he moved a little less quickly, and his feet were not so sure on the slimy earth. Now, Micky thought, it starts to get interesting.

  Sensing the dog's fatigue, the rats became bolder. When he had one in his jaws, another would spring for his throat. They ran between his legs and under his belly and leaped at the soft parts of his hide. One particularly big creature dug its teeth into his hind leg and refused to let go. He turned to snap at it but another rat distracted him by leaping on his snout. Then the leg seemed to give way--the rat must have severed a tendon, Micky thought--and suddenly the dog was limping.

  He was much slower to turn now. As if they knew that, the dozen or so remaining rats all attacked his rear end. Wearily he snapped them up in his jaws; wearily he broke their backs; wearily he dropped them on the bloody ground. But his underside was raw flesh, and he could not hold out much longer. Micky thought he might have bet wisely, and there would be six rats left when the dog died.

  Then the dog gained a sudden access of energy. Spinning around on three legs he killed another four rats in as many seconds. But it was his last gasp. He dropped a rat and then his legs buckled under him. Once more he turned his head to snap at the creatures, but this time he caught none, and his head drooped.

  The rats began to feed.

  Micky counted: there were six left.

  He looked at his companions. Hugh looked ill. Edward said to him: "A bit strong for your stomach, eh?"

  "The dog and the rats are simply behaving as nature intended," Hugh said. "It's the humans who disgust me."

  Edward grunted and went to buy more drinks.

  April's eyes were sparkling as she looked up at Tonio, a man--she thought--who could afford to lose ten guineas in a bet. Micky looked more closely at Tonio and saw in his face a hint of panic. I don't believe he can afford to lose ten guineas, Micky thought.

  Micky collected his winnings from the bookmaker: five shillings. He had made a profit on the evening already. But he had a feeling that what he had learned about Tonio could in the end be worth a great deal more.

  Section 4

  IT WAS MICKY who had most disgusted Hugh. Throughout the contest, Micky had been laughing hysterically. At first Hugh could not think why that laughter sounded so chillingly familiar. Then he remembered Micky's laughing just the same way when Edward threw Peter Middleton's clothes into the swimming hole. It was an unpleasant reminder of a grim memory.

  Edward came back with the drinks and said: "Let's go to Nellie's."

  They swallowed their tots of brandy and went out. In the street, Tonio and April took their leave and slipped into a building that looked like a cheap hotel. Hugh presumed they were going to take a room for an hour, or perhaps for the night. He wondered whether to go on with Edward and Micky. He was not having a very good time, but he was curious to know what went on at Nellie's. He had decided to try debauchery, so he probably ought to see the evening out, not quit halfway, he thought in the end.

  Nellie's was in Princes Street, off Leicester Square. There were two uniformed commissionaires at the door. As the three young men arrived, the commissionaires were turning away a middle-aged man in a bowler hat. "Evening dress only," said one of the commissionaires over the man's protests.

  They seemed to know Edward and Micky, for one touched his hat and the other opened the door. They went down a long passage to another door. They were inspected through a peephole, and then the door opened.

  It was a bit like walking into a drawing room in a big London house. Fires blazed in two large grates, there were sofas, chairs and small tables everywhere, and the room was full of men and women in evening dress.

  However, it only took another moment to see that this was no ordinary drawing room. Most of the men had their hats on. About half of them were smoking--something that was not permitted in polite drawing rooms--and some had their coats off and their ties undone. Most of the women were fully dressed but a few seemed to be in their underwear. Some of them were sitting on men's laps, others were kissing men, and one or two were permitting themselves to be fondled intimately.

  For the first time in his life Hugh was in a brothel.

  It was noisy, with men shouting jokes, women laughing, and a fiddler somewhere playing a waltz. Hugh followed Micky and Edward as they walked the length of the room. The walls were hung with pictures of naked women and copulating couples, and Hugh began to feel aroused. At the far end, under a huge oil painting of a complex outdoor orgy, sat the fattest person Hugh had ever seen: a vast-bosomed, heavily painted woman in a silk gown like a purple tent. She was sitting on a big regal chair and surrounded by girls. Behind her was a broad, red-carpeted staircase that presumably led up to bedrooms.

  Edward and Micky approached the throne and bowed, and Hugh followed suit.

  Edward said: "Nell, my pet, allow me to present my cousin, Mr. Hugh Pilaster."

  "Welcome, boys," said Nell. "Come and entertain these beautiful girls."

  "In a while, Nell. Is there a game tonight?"

  "There's always a game at Nellie's," she said, and waved toward a door at one side of the room.

  Edward bowed again and said: "We'll be back."

  "Don't fail me, boys!"

  They moved off. "She acts like royalty!" Hugh murmured.

  Edward laughed. "This is the top stew in London. Some of the people who bow to her tonight will be bowing to the Queen in the morning."

  They went into the next room, where twelve or fifteen men were sitting around two baccarat tables. Each table had a white line chalked about a foot from its edge, and the players pushed colored counters across the line to place bets. Most of them had drinks beside them, and the air was full of cigar smoke.

  There were a few empty chairs at one of the tables, and Edward and Micky immediately sat down. A waiter brought them some counters, and they each signed a receipt. Hugh said quietly to Edward: "What are the stakes?"

  "A pound minimum."

  It occurred to Hugh that if he played and won he could afford one of the women in the next room. He did not actually have as much as a pound in his pockets, but obviously Edward's credit was good here.... Then he remembered Tonio's losing ten guineas at the ratting. "I shan't play," he said.

  Micky said languidly: "We never imagined you would."

  Hugh felt awkward. He wondered whether to ask a waiter to bring him a drink, then he reflected that it would probably cost him a week's wages. The banker dealt cards from a shoe and Micky and Edward placed bets. Hugh decided to slip away.

  He returned to the main drawing room. Looking more closely at the furnitur
e, he could see that it was quite tawdry: there were stains on the velvet upholstery and burn marks on the polished wood, and the carpets were worn and ripped. Beside him a drunk man was on his knees, singing to a whore, while two of his friends laughed uproariously. On the next couch a couple were kissing with their mouths open. Hugh had heard that people did this but he had never seen it. He watched, mesmerized, as the man unbuttoned the front of the woman's dress and started to caress her breasts. They were white and flabby, with big dark-red nipples. The whole scene aroused and revolted Hugh at the same time. Despite his distaste, his prick grew hard. The man on the couch bent his head to the woman's bosom and began to kiss her breasts. Hugh could not believe what he was seeing. The woman looked over the top of the man's head, caught Hugh's eye, and winked.

  A voice in Hugh's ear said: "You could do that to me, if you like."

  He spun round, feeling as guilty as if he had been caught doing something shameful. Beside him was a dark-haired girl of about his own age, heavily rouged. He could not help glancing down at her bosom. He looked away again quickly, feeling embarrassed.

  "Don't be shy," she said. "Look as long as you want. They're for you to enjoy." To his horror he felt her hand on his groin. She found his stiff prick and squeezed it. "My goodness, you are excited," she said. Hugh was suffering exquisite anguish. He felt about to explode. The girl tilted her head up and kissed his lips, rubbing his prick at the same time.

  It was too much. Unable to control himself, Hugh ejaculated into his underwear.

  The girl felt it. For a moment she just looked surprised, then she burst out laughing. "My God, you are a green one!" she said loudly. Hugh felt humiliated. The girl looked around and said to the nearest whore: "I only touched him, and he creamed himself!" Several people laughed.

  Hugh turned away and headed for the exit. The laughter seemed to follow him the length of the room. He had to restrain himself from running. At last he reached the door. A moment later he was out in the street.

  The night had cooled a little, and he took a deep breath and paused to calm himself. If this was dissipation, he did not like it. The dollymop Maisie had been rude about his father; the ratting had been revolting; the whores had laughed at him. The whole lot of them could go to the devil.

  A commissionaire gave him a sympathetic look. "Decided to have an early night, sir?"

  "What a good idea," said Hugh, and he walked away.

  Micky was losing money. He could cheat at baccarat if he had the bank, but tonight the bank would not come to him. He was secretly relieved when Edward said: "Let's get a couple of girls."

  "You go," he said, feigning indifference. "I'll play on."

  A gleam of panic showed in Edward's eyes. "It's getting late."

  "I'm trying to win back my losses," Micky said stubbornly.

  Edward lowered his voice. "I'll pay for your chips."

  Micky pretended to hesitate, then give in. "Oh, all right."

  Edward smiled.

  He settled up and they went into the main room. Almost immediately, a blond girl with large breasts came up to Edward. He put his arm around her bare shoulders, and she pressed her bosom against his chest.

  Micky scanned the girls. A slightly older woman with a nicely debauched look caught his eye. He smiled at her and she came over. She put her hand on his shirtfront, dug her nails into his chest, stood on tiptoe and gently bit his lower lip.

  He saw Edward watching him, flushed with excitement. Micky began to feel eager. He looked at his own woman. "What's your name?" he said.

  "Alice."

  "Let's go upstairs, Alice," he said.

  They all went up the stairs together. On the landing was a marble statue of a centaur with a huge erect penis, which Alice rubbed as they went by. Next to it a couple were performing the sexual act standing up, oblivious of a drunk man sitting on the floor watching them.

  The women headed for separate rooms, but Edward steered them into the same room. "All together tonight, boys?" said Alice.

  "We're saving money," Micky said, and Edward laughed.

  "At school together, were you?" she said knowingly, as she closed the door behind them. "Used to frig each other off?"

  "Shut up," Micky said, embracing her.

  While Micky kissed Alice, Edward came up behind her, put his arms around her, and cupped her breasts. She looked faintly surprised but made no objection. Micky felt Edward's hands moving between his body and the woman's, and he knew that Edward was rubbing himself against her rump.

  After a moment the other girl said: "What shall I do? I feel a bit left out."

  "Get your drawers off," Edward told her. "You're next."

  Chapter THREE

  JULY

  Section 1

  AS A LITTLE BOY, Hugh had thought Pilasters bank was owned by the walkers. These personages were in fact lowly messengers, but they were all rather portly, and wore immaculate morning dress with silver watch-chains across their ample waistcoats, and they moved about the bank with such ponderous dignity that to a child they appeared the most important people there.

  Hugh had been brought here at the age of ten by his grandfather, old Seth's brother. The marble-walled banking hall on the first floor had seemed like a church: huge, gracious, silent, a place where incomprehensible rites were performed by an elite priesthood in the service of a divinity called Money. Grandfather had shown him all around: the carpeted hush of the third floor, occupied by the partners and their correspondence clerks, where little Hugh had been given a glass of sherry and a plate of biscuits in the Partners' Room; the senior clerks at their tables on the fourth floor, bespectacled and anxious, surrounded by bundles of papers tied with ribbon like gifts; and the juniors on the top floor, sitting at their high desks in lines like Hugh's toy soldiers, scratching entries in ledgers with inky fingers. But best of all, for Hugh, had been the basement, where contracts even older than grandfather were kept in vaults, thousands of postage stamps waited to be licked, and there was a whole room full of ink stored in enormous glass jars. It had amazed him to reflect on the process. The ink came into the bank, it was spread over the papers by the clerks, and then the papers were returned to the basement to be stored forever; and somehow this made money.

  The mystery had gone out of it now. He knew that the massive leather-bound ledgers were not arcane texts but simple lists of financial transactions, laboriously compiled and scrupulously updated; and his own fingers had become cramped and ink-stained by days of writing in them. A bill of exchange was no longer a magic spell but merely a promise to pay money at a future date, written on a piece of paper and guaranteed by a bank. Discounting, which as a child he had thought must mean counting backwards from a hundred down to one, turned out to be the practice of buying bills of exchange at a little less than their face value, keeping them until their due date, then cashing them at a small profit.

  Hugh was a general assistant to Jonas Mulberry, the Principal Clerk. A bald man of about forty, Mulberry was good-hearted but a little sour. He would always take time to explain things to Hugh, but he was very quick to find fault if Hugh was in the least hasty or careless. Hugh had been working under him for the past year, and yesterday he had made a serious mistake. He had lost a bill of lading for a consignment of Bradford cloth destined for New York. The Bradford manufacturer had been downstairs in the banking hall asking for his money, but Mulberry had needed to check the bill before authorizing payment, and Hugh could not find the document. They had been obliged to ask the man to come back in the morning.

  In the end Hugh had found the bill, but he had spent most of the night worrying about it, and this morning he had devised a new system of dealing with papers for Mulberry.

  On the table in front of him he had two cheap wooden trays, two oblong cards, a quill pen and an inkwell. He wrote slowly and neatly on one card:

  For the attention of the Principal Clerk

  On the second card he wrote:

  Having been dealt with by the Princ
ipal Clerk

  He carefully blotted his writing then fixed one card to each tray with tacks. He put the trays on Jonas Mulberry's table and stood back to survey his work. At that moment Mr. Mulberry came in. "Good morning, Mr. Hugh," he said. All family members were addressed this way at the bank because otherwise there would be confusion among all the different Mr. Pilasters.

  "Good morning, Mr. Mulberry."

  "And what the dickens is this?" Mulberry said tetchily, looking at the trays.

  "Well," Hugh began. "I found that bill of lading."

  "Where was it?"

  "Mixed up with some letters you had signed."

  Mulberry narrowed his eyes. "Are you trying to say it was my fault?"

  "No," Hugh said quickly. "It's my responsibility to keep your papers in order. That's why I've instituted the tray system--to separate papers you've already dealt with from papers you haven't yet looked at."

  Mulberry grunted noncommittally. He hung his bowler hat on the hook behind the door and sat down at the table. Finally he said: "We'll try it--it might be quite effective. But next time, have the courtesy to consult me before implementing your ingenious ideas. This is my room, after all, and I am the Principal Clerk."

  "Certainly," Hugh said. "I'm sorry." He knew he should have asked Mulberry's permission, but he had been so keen on his new idea that he had not had the patience to wait.

  "The Russian loan issue closed yesterday," Mulberry went on. "I want you to go down to the post room and organize the counting of the applications."

  "Right." The bank was raising a loan of two million pounds for the government of Russia. It had issued 100-pound bonds which paid five pounds interest per year; but they were selling the bonds for 93 pounds, so the true interest rate was over five and three-eighths. Most of the bonds had been bought by other banks in London and Paris, but some had been offered to the general public, and now the applications would have to be counted.