The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 109

"I thought I had stopped him," he had kept muttering as he read.

"I thought he understood that he must wait." By the time he had finished reading, he had been pale as candle wax and the flesh seemed to have sagged from the bones' of his face like un risen dough.

"Poor old Jameson," he had whispered at last. "Twenty years we have been friends and now he goes and destroys me." Mr. Rhodes had leaned his elbows on the desk and placed his face in his hands. He had sat like that for many minutes and then said clearly. "Well, Jordan, now I will see who my true friends are." Mr. Rhodes had not slept for five nights. after that. Jordan had lain awake in his own room down the passage and listened to the heavy tread back and forth across the yellowwood floor, and then, long before the first light of dawn, Mr. Rhodes would ring for him, and they would ride together for hours upon the slopes of Table Mountain before returning to the great white mansion to face the latest renunciations and rejections, to watch with a kind of helpless fascination his life and his work crumbling inexorably into dust about them.

Then Arnold had arrived to take his place as Jordan's assistant.

His official title was second secretary, and Jordan had welcomed his assistance with the more mundane details of running the complex household. He had accompanied them on their visit to London in the aftermath of Jameson's misadventure, and remained firmly by Rhodes" side on the long return journey via the Suez Canel, Beira and Salisbury.

Now Arnold stood attentively beside Mr. Rhodes" desk, handing him a sheet typed upon the caligraph, waiting while he read and corrected it, and then replacing it with a fresh sheet. With the rancid taste of envy, Jordan recognized, not for the first time, that Arnold possessed the clean blond good looks that Mr. Rhodes so much admired. His demeanour was modest and frank, yet when he laughed, his entire being seemed to glow with some inner illumination. He had been up at Oriel, Mr. Rhodes" old Oxford college, and it was more and more obvious that Mr. Rhodes took pleasure and comfort in having him near by, as he had once taken from Jordan's presence.

Jordan waited quietly by the door, feeling strangely out of place in what he had come to think of as his own home, until Mr. Rhodes handed the last corrected sheet to Arnold and looked up.

"Ah, Jordan," he said. "I wanted to warn you that I am advancing the date of my departure for Bulawayo. I think my Rhodesians need me.

I must go to them." "I will see to it immediately," Jordan nodded.

"Have you decided on a date, Mr. Rhodes?" "Next Monday." "We will take the express to Kimberley, of course?" "You will not be accompanying me," said Mr. Rhodes flatly.

"I do not understand, Mr. Rhodes. "Jordan made a helpless little gesture of incomprehension.

"I require utter loyalty and honesty in my employees." "Yes, Mr. Rhodes, I know that." Jordan nodded, and then slowly his expression became uncertain and disbelieving. "You are not suggesting that I have ever been disloyal or dishonest-" "Get that file, please, Arnold," Mr. Rhodes ordered, and when he fetched it from the library table, he added, "Give it to him. Arnold silently came across the thick silk and wool carpet, and offered the box-file to Jordan. As he reached for it, Jordan was aware, for the first time ever, of something other than openness and friendly concern in Arnold's eyes, it was a flash of vindictive triumph so vicious as to sting like the lash of a riding-whip across the face. It lasted for only a blink Of time, and was gone so swiftly that it might never have been, but it left Jordan feeling utterly vulnerable and in dreadful danger.

He placed the folder on the table beside him, and opened the cover. There were at least fifty sheets in the folder. Most of them had been typed on the caligraph, and each was headed "Copy of original." There were "stockbrokers" buy and sell orders, for shares in De Beers and Consolidated Goldfields. The quantities of shares in the transactions were enormous, involving millions of sterling. The braking firm was Silver & Co of whom Jordan had never heard, though they purported to conduct business in Johannesburg, Kimberley and London.

Then there were copies of statements from half a dozen banks, in the different centres where Silver & Co. had offices. A dozen or -so entries on the statements had been underlined in red ink. "Transfer to Rholands -"C86,321 - 7s 9d. Transfer to Rholands - f,146,821 - 9s I Id." The name shocked him, Ralph's company, and though he did not understand why, it increased his sense of peril.

"I don't understand what this has to do with me-" He looked up at Mr. Rhodes.

"Your brother entered into a series of large bear transactions in those companies most drastically affected by the failure of Jameson's enterprise." "It would appear-" Jordan began uncertainly, and was interrupted by Mr. Rhodes.

"It would appear that he has made profits in excess of a million pounds, and that he and his agents have gone to extreme lengths to disguise and conceal these machinations." "Mr. Rhodes, why do you tell me this, why do you adopt that tone? He is my brother, but I cannot be held responsible-" Mr. Rhodes held up one hand to silence him. "Nobody has accused you of anything yet your eagerness to justify yourself is unbecoming." Then he opened the leather bound copy of Plutarch's Lives which lay on one "corner of his desk. There were three sheets of writing-paper lying between the pages. Mr. Rhodes took out the sheets, and proffered the top one to Jordan.

"Do you recognize this?" Jordan felt himself blushing agonizingly.

At that moment he hated himself for ever having written this letter.

He had done so in the terrible _" tual travail following the night spirit of Ralph's -discoveries and brutal accusation in the private pullman coach from Kimberley.

"It is the copy of a private letter that I wrote to my brother. Jordan could not lift his eyes to meet those of Mr. Rhodes. "I do not know what possessed me to keep a copy of it." A paragraph caught his eye, and he could not prevent himself re-reading his own words.