Bones in London - Edgar Wallace [26]
The girl made a note on her pad.
“I want you to get the best men in London to search out this Company. If necessary, get two private detectives, or even three. Set them to work at once, and spare no expense. I want to know who’s running the company – I’d investigate the matter myself, but I’m so fearfully busy – and where their offices are. Tell the detectives,” said Bones, warming to the subject, “to hang around the motorcar shops in the West End. They’re bound to hear a word dropped here and there, and–”
“I quite understand,” said the girl.
Bones put out his lean paw and solemnly shook the girl’s hand.
“If,” he said, with a tremble in his voice, “if there’s a typewriter in London that knows more than you, my jolly old Marguerite, I’ll eat my head.”
On which lines he made his exit.
Five minutes later the girl came into the office with a slip of paper.
“The Plover Motor Car Company is registered at 604, Gracechurch Street,” she said. “It has a capital of eighty thousand pounds, of which forty thousand pounds is paid up. It has works at Kenwood, in the north-west of London, and the managing director is Mr Charles O Soames.”
Bones could only look at her open-mouthed.
“Where on earth did you discover all this surprising information, dear miss?” he asked, and the girl laughed quietly.
“I can even tell you their telephone number,” she said, “because it happens to be in the Telephone Book. The rest I found in the Stock Exchange Year Book.”
Bones shook his head in silent admiration.
“If there’s a typewriter in London–” he began, but she had fled.
An hour later Bones had evolved his magnificent idea. It was an idea worthy of his big, generous heart and his amazing optimism.
Mr Charles O Soames, who sat at a littered table in his shirt-sleeves, was a man with a big shock of hair and large and heavily drooping moustache, and a black chin. He smoked a big, heavy pipe, and, at the moment Bones was announced, his busy pencil was calling into life a new company offering the most amazing prospects to the young and wealthy.
He took the card from the hands of his very plain typist, and suppressed the howl of joy which rose to his throat. For the name of Bones was known in the City of London, and it was the dream of such men as Charles O Soames that one day they would walk from the office of Mr Augustus Tibbetts with large parcels of his paper currency under each arm.
He jumped up from his chair and slipped on a coat, pushed the prospectus he was writing under a heap of documents – one at least of which bore a striking family likeness to a county court writ – and welcomed his visitor decorously and even profoundly.
“In re Plover Car,” said Bones briskly. He prided himself upon coming to the point with the least possible delay.
The face of Mr Soames fell.
“Oh, you want to buy a car?” he said. He might have truly said “the car,” but under the circumstances he thought that this would be tactless.
“No, dear old company promoter,” said Bones, “I do not want to buy your car. In fact, you have no cars to sell.”
“We’ve had a lot of labour trouble,” said Mr Soames hurriedly. “You’ve no idea of the difficulties in production – what with the Government holding up supplies – but in a few months–”
“I know all about that,” said Bones. “Now, I’m a man of affairs and a man of business.”
He said this so definitely that it sounded like a threat.
“I’m putting it to you, as one City of London business person to another City of London business person, is it possible to make cars at your factory?”
Mr Soames rose to the occasion.
“I assure you, Mr Tibbetts,” he said earnestly, “it is possible. It wants a little more capital than we’ve been able to raise.”
This was the trouble with all Mr Soames’ companies, a long list of which appeared on a brass plate by the side of his door. None of them were sufficiently capitalized to do anything except to supply him with his fees as managing director.
Bones produced a dinky little pocket-book from his waistcoat and read his notes, or, rather, attempted to read his notes. Presently he gave it up