The Case of the Four Friends

by J. C. Masterman

  But Chapman still shook his head, and Sandham realized that this was something more than an old man’s whim. He tried once more – at the least he must try to gain a little time.

  ‘I know I’ve taken less trouble lately that I should have about our business,’ he said, ‘but I promise you that I’ll take your warnings to heart. If only you’ll stand by me we’ll soon bring things back again to the position they were in before the war. I’ll do more myself and not delegate so much – and I’ll ginger up Mr Barrick, too. Come, you can’t throw us over at a moment’s notice! Won’t you think about it, and let us talk it all over when I come back from my holiday?’

  ‘I am prepared to stay till March, Mr Charles,’ was the obstinate reply, and with that Sandham had, for the time being, to be content.

  ‘Well, I’m more sorry than words can say, but I won’t press you now. Will you ask Mr Barrick to come in to see me?’

  ‘Mr Barrick has not yet arrived at the office, sir.’

  ‘Oh well, he’s later than usual. Ask him to come in as soon as he does arrive.’

  ***

  Left to himself, Charles Sandham gave way for a moment to a mood of despair. If Chapman wished to go, that was an inconvenience but nothing more – he was rather a silly old man nowadays anyhow, and his affectation of being the last support of tradition was unbearably tiresome. If Barrick was neglecting his work, that was inconvenient, too, but, after all, it could be dealt with. The inconvenience in both cases was caused rather by the time when (as he saw it) his subordinates had failed him than by anything which they had done or left undone. The root of his personal trouble in the office was the state of his own health. He had not been as well as usual, and his wife had persuaded him, not very easily, to see a specialist. The verdict had been neither good nor bad. ‘It’s like this, Sandham,’ the great man had said at the end of his examination, ‘you’re really as well as any man of your age who’s lived through two wars has a right to be. Generally speaking, you’re fit and strong, and there’s no sort of reason why you shouldn’t live another twenty-five years – and enjoy them. But it’s no good pretending that you’re quite the man you were – how could you be at sixty-four? – and it’s my business to tell you that you ought to take things a little easier. I’ve seen you on your holidays, and I am telling you now that two rounds of golf every day is too much for you. You should be content with eighteen holes and a rest after luncheon. I’ve no doubt that it’s the same in your office. You ought to take things a bit easier there, too. Shorten your hours and avoid too much worry and strain. Your heart is none too bad – for your age – but you can’t expect it to do the job of the heart of a man of thirty. Don’t worry – but be content to change into a lower gear now that you’re running uphill. Take my advice, and I dare say you’ll outlive me – anyhow, you won’t be paying me another fee for an overhaul for the next ten years. But you must take life a bit easier.’

  His health – and Toby Barrick – and Chapman were minor inconveniences, and no doubt the doctor was right that he should not worry over such things. But Bannister! Why, oh why, had he been foolish enough to betray to Chapman that his relations with Bannister were not what they should have been? How much had he betrayed? Somehow, anyhow, he must correct the impression left in Chapman’s mind that he had quarrelled with his oldest and closest friend. If ever his true feelings about Evelyn Bannister became common knowledge, then indeed he was undone. And as he contemplated the possibilities of this, he buried his face in his hands and groaned aloud.

  For all Sandham’s troubles, and they were real ones, centred in Evelyn Bannister, because Bannister knew – and, so at least Sandham believed and hoped, was the only one to know – that Sandham, for all his reputation for integrity and respectability, had a guilty secret. There is no need to enter into details or to describe the causes or the course of his aberrations from the narrow path of rectitude. It is, after all, an all too familiar story, and perhaps one which could, with suitable changes, be applied to many men of seemingly upright and respectable life. To be precise, then, Sandham had in the years between the wars drifted by degrees and almost imperceptibly into dubious company, and allowed himself a license in his pleasures which was – to say the least of it – imprudent in the extreme. That his conduct had been almost unbelievably unreasonable goes without saying. How could a man in his position be so unutterably foolish? The answer is clear enough – in such matters, reason and calculation play no part whatever. The blow had fallen, as it is wont to do in such cases, with staggering suddenness and violence. Sandham had committed acts of impropriety which threatened to break up his whole life and career; exposure was threatened, ruin, social as well as financial, was on the very threshold. Illogically, hopelessly, even pathetically, he showed himself unable to deal with this crisis. Had a client been in a similar predicament he would have given sound, practical, experienced advice, yet when his own career and his own good name were at stake he seemed unable to cope with the situation. He fell into a panic, he contemplated leaving the country, he threw in his hand. Almost, that is, but not quite. In his extremity, and as a last resort, he turned to Bannister, and indeed he might well think that his old friend was his chief hope. He had known Bannister since the latter had joined his company as a subaltern in the last year of the First War, and he had got to know him better with every year that had passed since. He thought him to be a loyal and trusty friend; he knew him to be experienced, capable, and hard as steel. They had spent many holidays together, they had cooperated successfully in business. How well he remembered that evening when, in despair, he had flung into his friend’s rooms and poured out the story of impending disaster. Bannister had listened, had asked some questions – clear, pungent, and going straight to the heart of the matter. ‘I’ll take it all over,’ he said at length, ‘and I’ll square these people. If you trust me, I think you will never hear of it again – but it will be expensive.’ In the end Sandham had paid him a cheque for £1,500, and in the relief of feeling that he was secure once more counted the money well-spent. Yet complete serenity of mind never quite returned, and gradually the gnawing suspicion entered his mind that a considerable part of the money had indeed remained in his friend’s pocket. He tried, but not quite successfully, to stifle his doubts, and, after all, what did the money matter provided only that he was safe? The years passed and confidence returned.

  And then the second blow fell, almost as frightening and even more unexpected than the first. It was only a week or so before Christmas when Bannister had rung him up – and told him that he would call at the office to fix up the details for the New Year’s holiday. ‘Cripley’s too ill to come, you know,’ he had said, ‘and we’ll have to find someone else to make up our four – and I understand that the Magnifico is being awfully tiresome about the rooms. I’ll come round and have a chat with you about it after lunch.’ He had come round, and it was then that the blow had fallen.

  ‘Charles,’ he had said, almost as soon as he had sat down and lighted a cigarette, ‘there’s a small matter I’d like to get out of the way before we discuss the holiday.’

  ‘Right-ho – fire away – though it’s not, I imagine, as important as our comfort at the Magnifico.’

  ‘That,’ Bannister replied, ‘is as you may judge. It’s a simple matter, but not exactly unimportant. I’ve rather a lot of financial irons in the fire just now, and I’ve spent rather too much – so I’m short of ready cash. I want you to lend me five thousand pounds at the New Year.’

  Sandham had simply laughed. ‘My dear Evelyn, don’t try to pull my leg; you’re much better off than I am and your credit’s as good or better than mine. Besides, you know well enough that I’ve got all this extra expense of Enid’s wedding in the spring, and I’m going to fit her and her young man up with a flat as well. What’s the big idea, anyhow?’

  And then Bannister had smiled – a slow, tight-lipped kind of smile which seemed to freeze the words as he spoke them.

  ‘It wo
uld be a pity, it would be the greatest pity, if Enid’s wedding were to be clouded over – or even prevented – because your peccadilloes of – let me see – twelve years ago were to come to light just now. And I have reason to think that they may.’ And Bannister had smiled a second time.

  It may well be that no sensation is worse than the knowledge that you are in the clutches of a blackmailer – and helpless. Charles Sandham felt a kind of cold fear, and strangely it never occurred to him to doubt either Bannister’s power to ruin him or his intention to do so. Five thousand pounds was a considerable sum, though it would not cripple him, but that he knew would only be the beginning. He knew something of the ways of the blackmailer, and he was not ignorant of the likelihood – or certainty, as it seemed to him – that one demand would be followed by many another. In a flash he seemed to see the wretched and slippery slope on which he had stepped; he saw the gradual descent; he saw the final and inevitable catastrophe. A few years of increasing wretchedness was the prospect before him, and no action that he could invent or improvise offered the hope of salvation. Desperately he stammered the first words that came into his mind.

  ‘Evelyn, you can’t mean that! Dash it all, we’ve been friends for thirty years and more. You know I can’t start paying hush money. My God, I’d rather shoot myself now than submit to blackmail.’

  ‘Would you?’ said Bannister dryly. ‘I much doubt it. Besides, my dear fellow, why speak of blackmail? It’s just because we are friends, and friends of such long standing, that I’m not asking you to help me by giving me money. I only need a loan, which I shall in good time repay.’

  He smiled once more. ‘It is perhaps a pity that you are not in a position to refuse me – for that gives the loan the appearance of being forced. I’m sure that if there had been no peccadillo (that’s what we called it, didn’t we?) twelve years ago, you would have lent me this money without the slightest objection. Of course you would! So why let my small personal service to you in the past complicate our arrangements now?’

  ‘I’m damned if I will,’ Sandham exclaimed, but Bannister brushed his objections aside.

  ‘It will be quite convenient to me if the money is in my hands by, let us say, the second week in January. We can make all the necessary arrangements about it whilst we are at the Magnifico for the New Year. There couldn’t be a more convenient time to arrange all the details, for we shall have privacy and all the time we want at our disposal. They tell me that the Magnifico is getting quite a reputation as a place where business deals can be put through. By the way, since Cripley is ill, I’ve asked my nephew, Piers Gradon, to make up our four, and he’s accepted – so that’s all right. You’ll find him a deuced good bridge player and a fine golfer.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I can come myself this year,’ Sandham replied.

  ‘And once again I feel convinced that you will. You’ve no need to exaggerate your difficulties, and I’m quite sure that you’ll see things in a rosier light when you’ve arranged just how to raise that five thousand pounds.’

  And Bannister had taken his leave with the air of a man who has satisfactorily concluded an agreeable and amicable conversation.

  ***

  Every word of that conversation had imprinted itself on Sandham’s mind. Day after day he had said to himself that he would face it out and refuse to let himself be coerced; inevitably and always he had flinched from the decision. Would it not be better to play for time, and at least postpone the crisis until his daughter was married and perhaps even till Toby was married too? Did not the latter’s engagement to Dahlia Constant suggest that money would be very easy to come by for a time at least? But no, was it not more likely that that engagement would only add to Bannister’s demands and make him more insistent? And again Sandham’s mind would swing round like the needle of a compass in a hurricane. Better, then, to face the issue and precipitate the inevitable crisis. Better to stage the dramatic finale now without being dragged through the misery and degradation which were the lot of a blackmailer’s victim. Who was Evelyn Bannister to spoil the lives of himself and his daughter and, for all he knew, the lives of other victims as well? In that mood Sandham began to cast himself for the part of the Samson who would pull down the pillars of the temple, even though his act must involve him in destruction. Still he toyed with the stiletto; he balanced it in his hand and delicately tried its point and its razor-like edge. It would pierce like a needle and make such a small yet deadly hole! He could see the curtain fall on that act – with the self-sacrificing hero standing by the body of the villain. Or, perhaps, suicide, but suicide in the presence of the Enemy, so that his own death would free at a stroke all the other victims of Bannister’s machinations. Sandham’s eye strayed from the stiletto to the revolver on his desk, and he slowly put out his hand and picked it up. For a minute or two he sat holding it in his hand, then, as though controlled by some outside force, he dropped it into his dispatch-case among his papers. Then he picked up the stiletto once more and continued to play with it. Idle fancies, divorced from reality, thoughts of the stage and not of real life – but of such fancies murder can be born.

  Chapter Three

  An observer who saw Toby Barrick walk into the office that morning would have remarked, had he been cognizant of Toby’s normal habits, that he lacked his usual air of assurance and optimism. As a general rule, he would stride in as though the world was indeed his oyster, and as though he had no sort of doubt that he would quickly prise it open and abstract the pearl from within. His life had, indeed, been a record of success in many different spheres, and at the age of thirty-eight he could look back on many triumphs and very few failures. One disaster had marred his career, for his young wife, whom he had married early in the war, had been killed in an air-raid at the beginning of 1941, after only six months of married life. Toby had felt the shock deeply – more deeply indeed than his friends had expected – but the war had left him little time for idle regrets. He had rallied well enough and taken part again in the pleasures of life and the society of his contemporaries when, at the termination of the war, such society was again open to him. Apart from that one disaster his life had been a success story – yet his successes had not been so resounding as to excite jealousy and his achievements had not lost him the goodwill of his friends. All through his life he had been lucky, and no one had grudged him his good fortune. At school and at the University he had done well both in the things of the mind and in sport; in the war he had a very good record, and service overseas had brought him decorations and moderate yet substantial reputation; after the war, when others had competed desperately for jobs, he had stepped as though by right into a partnership in a solid and long-established family firm. And all the time he had exercised over his friends and companions a facile yet compelling personal charm. Alas, for that fatal gift! I pray, said a perceptive parent, that the fairies will never dower an offspring of mine with that. Beauty or ugliness (of the right kind), or good humour or wit, or artistic temperament or sound common sense – all have their uses and all can be turned to good account, but charm will betray its master in the end. Anything but charm, for charm will surely come to a bad end! That, however, was not the view held by Toby Barrick. He had seen himself accepted, welcomed, and flattered by half the hostesses in London, and indeed in the years after the war many parties were not considered complete if he was not one of the participants.

  Success, no doubt, had always come to him too easily. Just because he was charming and sought-after he was also weak and self-indulgent, and he gave way to an easy and unjustified optimism where his own affairs were concerned. Of course everything would come right in the end; it always had and it always would again. It might be true, and he would not bother to deny it, that he neglected the hard work of his profession whenever, and that was often, it interfered with his social life. Chapman’s shrewd eye had early observed that he knew a great deal less about the law than he did about London hostesses, and Chapman, though prepared to allow a
reasonable license to a partner in the firm for the first year or two after the war, was not likely to condone a dereliction of duty which continued after the excuse for it had passed. Perhaps the war had had a greater effect on Toby Barrick than he or his intimates realized. The day-to-day expedients, the impossibility of making long-term plans, the uncertainty about the future, the ruthlessness of life, had all had their influence. Besides, Toby was a gambler – at one time on the crest of a wave of optimism, at the next in the depths of depression. He spend money recklessly – he betted freely – he neither considered nor much cared for the load of trouble which he was building up for himself. Most of all he had the power of self-illusion. It hardly occurred to him that the rules of conduct and standards of morality which applied to others could have any reference to himself. Always he left out of his calculations the ugly realities of the present, and skipped, as it were, the intervening stages between his present condition and a rosy and prosperous future. It was as though a gambler should make all his calculations and arrange all his investments on the assumption that he would certainly win £75,000 in the Pools – if not in the next week, at least in the week after.

  It is an old story and a sad one. Toby himself would hardly have been able to explain how it came about that he began to misappropriate some of the assets of the firm’s clients to his own uses. Certainly he was not consciously or actively dishonest; he thought, if he thought at all, in terms of a temporary loan which could be repaid at any time and without undue difficulty. Your true gambler will never face the possibilty of a sustained run a bad luck. But it is certain that, had Chapman been able to inquire into the affairs of Sir William Merger, he would not have found them in that apple-pie order in which affairs controlled by Sandham, Sandham and Bovis should indubitably have been. How often, once again, this old and gloomy story repeats itself. Everything with maddening fatality turns against the gambler at the same moment. Toby had spent money more lavishly than ever before in the preceding summer, he had also gambled for far larger sums than was his custom on the erroneous assumption that his luck must turn. In this he had been disappointed. At the same moment, the rather sudden illness of Sir William Merger threatened an examination of his affairs, and that, in its turn, threatened personal disaster. Worst, far worst of all, Dahlia Constant, that great heiress – to whom Toby regarded himself as almost, if not quite, engaged – had somehow brought herself to refuse him. If Toby’s brow was clouded as he entered the office, surely he had good cause for gloom.