Contango (Ill Wind) by James Hilton

to dissent, nor was there really much reason why he should. It
had, however, suddenly occurred to him that he and his wife were the joint
holders of forty-eight thousand preference shares in Amalgamated Engineers,
Limited, and that the passing of the dividend would reduce their income
during the current year from about six thousand to a little over four.
    That evening, at the club, he wrote a long letter to her, emphasising the
poor state of trade, but avoiding the mention of any particular item of bad
news. Time enough for her to learn the truth when she got home, he thought.
After he had posted the letter he went to the second house of a music-hall,
drank plenty of whisky, and went to bed. It was an unsatisfactory world, he
decided, trying to sleep. He thought of his father and his grandfather and
his great-grandfather, all living their lives quite comfortably in a more
ordered age—buying raw material and labour, selling the finished
product, and pocketing the difference as neatly and as regularly as
clockwork. All plain sailing in those days. You just made some useful
article, charged a fair price for it, and there you were—with a steady
income for life. And, what was more, you could go on making and selling
without worry. Golden days! But now, with passed dividends and bad debts
abroad and currency losses and income- tax…. Good God, what were things
coming to? And he thought, for one supremely mournful moment: “Perhaps
it’s as well my boy didn’t survive to carry on the firm, since
the firm may not survive to be carried on.”
    What troubled him most were the family and household economies that would
have to be made. His own personal wants were simple, but his wife and
daughter spent a good deal; he would have to be unpleasantly frank with them
when they came home. Perhaps one of the three cars could be dispensed with;
his wife might use the big Daimler in future and he himself could make do
with a season- ticket on the railway… But by this time his natural tendency
to look on the brighter side of things had begun to reassert itself, and he
fell asleep tranquilly, hopefully, and a little drunk.
    About a fortnight later Brown was still in London and Parceval rang him up
at the club one morning. “Oh, hello, Brown. I’ve just arrived in
town again after a flying visit to Paris. Literally a flying visit. I had to
meet the steel cartel… . By the way, I took the chance of looking up your
Roumanian friend. Nice fellow, as you said.”
    “He was still in Paris?”
    “Yes, and very glad to see me. It seems the French firm had just
told him there was nothing doing, so he was pleased enough to try his luck
somewhere else.”
    “Well, what did you think of his idea?”
    “Oh… interesting, you know. And probably no good. Most interesting
ideas are like that. But I told him he could make a model of his tin-can
arrangement down at my works at Chelmsford, if he cared to come over, so I
expect he’s quite happily packing now.”
    “But you surely don’t think there’s anything in it, do
you?”
    “Well, we shall know more about that when he shows us how it works,
shan’t we?”
    “D’you mean to say he’s going to let himself be thrown
out of an aeroplane in the thing?”
    “I suppose he is. He won’t find anyone else in a hurry to
volunteer.”
    “I—I don’t much like it. He’ll kill
himself.”
    “I wouldn’t say that. He needn’t take a very big
risk—he can make his trial descents over some lake, with boats to
bring him in if anything goes wrong.”
    “I should hope so.”
    “Of course—oh, of course. I like him very much, I may say. A
delightful personality. …”
    But Brown had little time to think of the charming Roumanian during the
next few weeks. Further cuts into his already straitened income seemed quite
likely; added to which there came a rather peremptory request from his
bankers to reduce a loan secured on shares of the combine.