"I see," said Angela; "the idea is to keep the members of the family in touch with one another, I suppose?"
"That's it," Erika nodded; "and at the same time profitable business often results. It gives the men an opportunity to discuss their affairs and if they have similar types of undertakings in different cities they're able to get in quite a lot of good work at the same time as they are having a week's holiday with their relatives and friends."
"Yes, I remember the custom," said Gregory, "but I can't think where I could have got hold of such a thing. If it gives the names of any of the people, read them out; that might give me a clue."
"Great Aunt Wilhelmina, Cousin Julia, Jacob Bauer (he's a Jew and doesn't seem to be at all popular with the rest of the crowd) the Engels branch of the family, Ernst, Mr. Saxe, Mrs. Klein also referred to as Aunt Marta Uncle Rudolf, Uncle Ulrich, Cousin Vicki, the Müllers, Mitzi, Gerta, Paula, August, little Paul…" Erika suddenly broke off. "There are dozens of them mentioned here."
Gregory shook his head. "No, none of those names mean anything special to me."
"Read it to us," Angela suggested, and Erika began, translating slowly into English as she read:
"'ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE NEXT FAMILY DAY
" 'Our last Family Reunion was not the success it should have been, owing to lack of forethought and careful preparation. As a result of over eagerness Great Aunt Wilhelmina arrived before we were ready, so we lost the telling effect of the old lady's entrance. Mother let us down very badly at the last moment by refusing to come at all; and, through neglect, other important members of the family did not receive their invitations or, having done so, did not accept because insufficient fuss was made about the importance of their presence in our midst. Our main mistake, however, was to quarrel openly with Cousin Julia, since this resulted in throwing her into the arms of that unspeakable Jew, Jacob Bauer, who immediately became engaged to her and who, through the power of his money and his hatred for us, has always striven to keep the family apart for his own benefit.
”`As you will remember, they threw a rival party to our own to which many outsiders, as well as certain members of the family, went instead of to ours. Even Mother was induced to desert us because she was very hard up at the time and, as usual, Jacob used his money bags, advancing her a big loan on condition that she put in a belated appearance at his party.
"'The failure of our last Family Reunion was all the more disastrous in that we had already decided that the time had come when the family must co operate and amalgamate their various business interests if our central firm was to increase and prosper in the way that a flourishing business should; but the attendance at the Reunion was so poor that it proved impracticable to put such a suggestion forward. The death of Great Aunt Wilhelmina, which followed, was a sad blow to us as it meant the splitting up of the Engels branch of the family; and an even more serious setback was the publication of Grandmother's Will which so wickedly deprived us of many assets.
”`So serious were our firm's losses as a result of these unfortunate events that many people thought we should be compelled to go out of business altogether; but since the appointment of Ernst as managing director of our firm the business has regained much lost ground and under his able guidance has become solvent again. It is. however, still under capitalized and owing to the restriction of markets finds difficulty in competing with its two principal rivals, the Jew, Jacob Bauer, whose bitter enmity, hypocrisy and cunning are used without respite in an attempt to strangle every enterprise which we start, and the firm of Saxe & Co., whose products compete with ours in many markets but whose major interests lie outside our sphere.
”`Competition has recently become so intense that it is more necessary than ever that members of the family should be induced to pool their resources instead of struggling on independently; otherwise each member will tend to become poorer and poorer until they fall entirely into the octopus like tentacles of Jacob, who will mercilessly exploit them as he has exploited the members of so many other families.'"
"Whoever meant to throw this party is evidently a big business man," Freddie interrupted.
"Yes. He seems much more concerned with the possibilities of amalgamating all the family interests than with the social side of the gathering," Erika agreed; and read on
"'The time has come, therefore, when it is imperative to hold another Family Reunion and use every means in our power to induce all members to accept the propositions which we shall place before them. It is suggested that the arrangements should be made by gradual stages, with careful preparation between each, so as not to alarm Cousin Julia and her Jew fiancé and cause them to work against us before we come out into the open and actually issue the invitations to our Reunion.
" ' Jacob knew quite well what our intentions were if we had been successful with our last Reunion, and as these constitute a grave threat to the prosperity of his own business he will naturally do everything in his power to prevent our holding another. But he is by no means so virile as he was, and if we go to work skilfully we might even succeed in persuading Julia to break off her engagement to him. She is, after all, a member of the family, and apart from her predilection for this blackguardly Jew we have no differences of opinion with her which cannot be surmounted. It would, therefore, be a great triumph for us if we could bring her back into the family fold; and nothing should be neglected which might lead towards this end.' "
"Gracious How he hates this Jewish business rival of his," Angela laughed. "And what a lark that the Jew is marrying into the family."
Erika smiled. "Apparently the family is by no means united. Father and Mother seem to have been living apart. Listen to this
"'In one respect we start off with much better prospects this time, because Father and Mother have made up their differences. Mother has taken a new lease of life and has at last been fully persuaded that she can do better for herself by coming in with the family than by dragging out a penurious old age as a pensioner of Cousin Julia and her Jewish fiancé.
"'The amount of active help which she can be expected to give us is still debatable as Jacob is certain to exercise financial pressure upon her to restrain her as far as he is able. Therefore she must not be unduly pressed to come to the party during the first days of our Family week but must be persuaded to work behind the scenes wherever possible in getting our more distant relatives together; particularly the Müller branch of the family as she has great influence with her nephews and nieces.
"'Apart from Jacob, the two people who might most seriously menace our plan for securing complete family unity are Mr. Saxe and Mrs. Klein or Aunt Marta, as we have always known her although she cannot really be considered as a member of the family.
" As well as being our competitor in some respects Mr. Saxe is immensely rich and, as money gravitates to money, he was persuaded to give his support to Jacob when our interests last clashed. But it cost him a considerable amount and, as usual, ,Jacob took all the credit to Julia and himself for the success of his operations; so Mr. Saxe was far from pleased and is much less likely to give Jacob his assistance this time when we eventually come into the open market against him. However, it is too much to hope that Mr. Saxe would support an amalgamation of the family interests to the detriment of Jacob to whom he is allied by ties of blood. The probability is that he will sit back and reap what advantage he can for his own firm while we are endeavouring to reconstruct ours and Jacob is occupied in endeavouring to check our expansion. Our objective, so far as Mr. Saxe is concerned, should therefore be to promote as much bad feeling between him and Jacob as possible so that he will reject any fresh advances that Jacob may make to him and, lulled by a false sense of security for his own concerns, be glad rather than sorry to see us putting a check upon the insatiable ambitions of the Jew.' "
"He seems to be a proper crook, doesn't he'," Angela broke in.
',No," Erika shrugged. "Just a very shrewd business man," and she continued:
`Mrs.
Klein presents a very different and particularly knotty problem. Her firm cannot be considered as a competitor to ours or Jacob's, and she has no particular love for either of us; yet, potentially, she could prove an immense asset to either of our rival concerns.
" `The half derelict chain of stores which she inherited is still incredibly badly run but they cover a huge area; and while for some years Aunt Marta's firm has failed to pay a dividend, it is quite certain that if the chain were taken over and placed under proper management it could be made to show handsome profits.
"'Any suggestion of an amalgamation with Mrs. Klein may seem extremely revolutionary from many points of view. Mother positively loathes her, while Uncle Rudolf and Uncle Ulrich with both of whom we are on the best of terms at the moment dislike her as much as does Mother; in addition, Aunt Marta has a long standing quarrel with our, managing director, Ernst.
" Can all these difficulties be overcome? Aunt Marta's dislike of Ernst is not so much a personal one, as in many ways they think alike, but is mainly due to fear. Knowing Ernst's ability and enterprise she is always frightened that one day he may decide that our firm should launch out in a new direction which would jeopardize her own rickety business. If she could be persuaded that Ernst has no such intention and, in fact, that she has much to gain from settling her quarrel with him, since he could then offer to reorganize her business and put it on a sound footing, and possibly help her in other directions too, she might well consider an amalgamation with us; in. which case it Would certainly be worth our while to invite her to our Family Reunion.
”It is inevitable that Uncle Rudolf and Uncle Ulrich will take offence if Mrs. Klein is asked to our Reunion; but that need not give us any immediate concern, because Uncle Rudolf is so far removed from the family sphere and Uncle Ulrich has been so ill recently that it is very doubtful if either of them will appear at least until the end of the week during which the party is held and they need know nothing of any overtures which we may make to Mrs. Klein until the whole matter is settled. They will be very annoyed when we have to inform them of it, but if we get satisfactory results from Mrs. Klein's attendance they will realize that we had good reason for our decision to ask her and, in any case, their interests are too closely allied to ours for there to be any danger of their going in with Jacob.'"
"Is there much more of it?" Angela asked, stifling a yawn. "Reams of it, my dear," Erika replied. "Would you like me to stop?"
"No, no," said Freddie. "Go on, do."
"All right, then."
" Mother is the remaining difficulty, and by far the greatest; but, whereas it would be a major triumph to get Mrs. Klein to appear early in our Reunion Week, we have no intention of asking Mother to join us until the party is properly under way. Her function will be to gather in the Müller family in secret and to allow Jacob to believe, until the very last moment, that he still has her under his thumb. Her appearance will then be all the greater triumph for us, and by the time we wish her to arrive we shall have had an opportunity to explain to her how wise we were in our decision to amalgamate; and that she will participate, just as much as any other member of the family, in the benefits to be derived from Mrs. Klein's chain of stores.
" It is of the first importance that as much work as possible should be put in before the invitations are issued, in order to ensure as great a number of acceptances to the Reunion as possible. Our first concern should be to link up with Cousin Vicki; our next to rope in those members of the family, such as Greta and Paula, who own small firms which were originally part of our business but were severed from us by Grandmother's iniquitous Will.
" It is also of the first importance that we should absorb as many of these small firms as possible on plausible excuses such as our excellent case for being granted the legal guardianship of Little August and Little Paul so as to postpone arousing Jacob's open antagonism as long as we can. At any stage of our arrangements he may realize that our firm is once more becoming a serious threat to his and he may decide to take active counter measures against us; but Mother must be used to quiet his suspicions… The longer we can prevent his endeavouring to wreck us by an open price cutting campaign the more likely we are to succeed in undermining his business to such an extent that when he wakes up to what we have been doing it will be too late to save himself from bankruptcy.
" The following are the stages in which it is proposed eventually to bring about a complete Reunion with all interests amalgamated under the head of the family.' "
"Erika darling," Angela interrupted, "must we really hear the stages by which this awful man proposes to blackmail all his relatives into letting him make a combine of their businesses?"
"Not if you don't wish to," Erika smiled, "As we don't know any of these people his schemes aren't of the least interest to us. I must say, though, that I should like to know how the thing came into Gregory's possession."
Freddie frowned. "Yes, it's hardly likely that you would have kept a thing like this in a secret hiding place on your person if it wasn't of some importance. Perhaps we can help you recall where you got it if we go back over the last few times you've taken money out of your shoes."
"I don't even remember when I took out the money last," said Gregory despondently, "let alone ever having seen these sheets of flimsy before."
"Well, you changed some German money into Finnish the day we arrived in Helsinki."
"That's right with that fair haired, half German chap in the hotel who did us down; but that was part of the money that Goering gave me and I was carrying it in my pocket."
"Right, then. Did you take off your shoes for any purpose while we were at Karinhall? Didn't you have a bath in the morning?"
"I've got it!” Gregory suddenly snapped his fingers. "That's when I put the papers with the money. Those bits of typescript came out of Goering's safe."
"Out of Goering's safe?" echoed Erika. "Then they must be something important."
"I remember now" Gregory stood up and began to pace quickly up and down; "I did have one look at them in Helsinki; when I was up in that room we took at the hotel, Freddie, just before you came in with the invitation to lunch with Angela and her father. I read the first few paragraphs, and as I couldn't make head or tail of them I put the sheets back to study when I had more leisure."
"But how on earth did you get hold of them?" Erika asked.
"I stole them," Gregory replied promptly. "It was while Goering was getting me the money. He had just taken a big packet of bank notes out of his safe when the telephone rang. Thrusting the bundle into my hand he said: 'Here l Count yourself out three thousand marks,' then he turned his back on me to answer the call.
"They were one hundred mark notes so I peeled off thirty, then I noticed that those flimsies had got wedged underneath the packet, in the rubber band that held the notes together. I suppose it was a crazy risk to take but it seemed to me at the time that any typescript out of Goering's private safe might contain some terrific secret; so I acted on impulse, pulled the sheets from under the rubber band and slipped them in my pocket. Later, when I undressed to have a bath, I took the opportunity to transfer the flimsies to my boot. It looks now, though, as if I risked my neck for an extract from his family album."
Erika glanced at a few further passages in the closely typed sheets. "Goodness knows l I've met most of Hermann's relatives at one time or another but I don't recognize any of these surnames and the Christian names don't seem to fit, either. It looks to me as though this has been sent to Goering because he is the commercial dictator of Germany and would naturally be interested in any amalgamation of big business interests that was projected; but how he could be expected to know all the ramifications of somebody else's family, I can't think."
"Perhaps it isn't what it appears to be at all," Freddie suggested, "but particulars of something quite different, set out in secret code. I'm jolly good at crossword puzzles; let me have a look at it."
"What is a crossword puzzle?" Gregory asked.
While the girls explained to him Freddie studied the latter part of the document; his German was just good enough to make out the general sense. At last he looked up and said:
"The chap who compiled this seems a most awful thug and means to go to any lengths. In one place he suggests that his mother should forcibly remove a girl named Marlene from the Schwartz's because they didn’t look after her properly; and in another that they should get Mrs. Klein's daughter, Paula, certified as insane if she refuses to come into the ring. There's a lot, too, about the careful preparation of cases for the courts by which it's proposed to try to secure the custody of several children with a view, apparently, to influencing the parents through them afterwards."
"Big business is often as dirty as politics," Angela shrugged. "many a rich man has made his millions by taking for his motto the saying: `The end justifies the means'."
Freddie nodded. "I expect you're right. It's just a very carefully worked out plan to amalgamate a whole lot of commercial interests which are under the control of different branches of two or three families, and to break the rival concern of this Jew chap, Jacob Bauer, whom the writer seems to dislike so much. Still, as it came out of Goering's safe there's just a chance that it might contain some hidden meaning; and it will amuse me to see if one could possibly read any other interpretation into all this blather about uncles and cousins and aunts."
He slipped the papers into his pocket and pulling on his furs went out to give the horses their afternoon feed and rubdown.
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