Fatal Venture Read Free

want it divided into two items: first, interest on the cost of the ship with depreciation, and, second, the actual running. This latter would include fuel, food, stores, wages and so on. Then lastly I want the probable daily rate we should have to charge to make the thing pay. Can you get these out, approximately?”
    Morrison was not sure. The charges his firm paid for big liners were not divided under the required headings. However, he knew clerks in the shipping offices and he might be able to get the information. The fares he could work out for himself.
    But he was not sure whether he ought. It would mean a lot of work, and if it were a thank-you job, it would not be worth his while. Then some of the information might be confidential. Bristow looked all right, but, for all Morrison knew to the contrary, he might be acting for some other tourist firm and merely want to learn some of the Boscombe’s secrets. There was no proof even that he was a solicitor. Morrison felt that until he knew more, he should not commit himself.
    “We would, of course, want a proper agreement before you did anything,” Bristow chimed in, having apparently read his thoughts. “You would want to be sure, first, of my bona fides, and, second, that you yourself would be paid for your trouble. Now, on the first item I shall tell you my idea, trusting you to keep it to yourself. That should meet that difficulty. On the second, I’ll offer you alternatives. Either I’ll pay for your labour at an agreed rate, or else I’ll offer you nothing now, but a much larger sum if the idea should come to anything.”
    This sounded reassuring, and Morrison decided to go a step further. “If you care to tell me your idea,” he said, “I repeat my promise to keep it to myself.”
    “Good enough,” Bristow nodded. “I’ll tell you.”
    Like a skilled narrator, he paused to whet his listener’s interest and enhance the value of what was coming. In spite of the speed of the train, it was comparatively silent in the compartment. The roar of the wheels on the rails, with the underlying rhythm of the passing joints, was muffled in the well-sprung coach with its sound-insulated walls and floor. For a moment none of the three occupants moved. Bristow sat with an eager expression in his eyes; Morrison awaited developments with a certain doubt, while the man in the further corner still slept unconcernedly. Bristow glanced at him searchingly; then, satisfied, he leant still further forward and resumed.
    “My tentative estimates – which I am not sure are correct – tell me that the cost of the ship itself is a heavy item in the cruising balance sheet. Take a great liner of, say, fifty thousand tons, and put her present day cost down at two and a half millions. Say, she has a life of twenty years. That would mean about three hundred and seventy-five thousand a year for interest and sinking fund alone. Suppose we cruised for six months in the year and carried an average of two thousand passengers. Then each passenger would have to pay a hundred and eighty-seven pounds towards the cost of the ship, or over seven pounds a week. Am I correct so far?”
    Morrison calculated on the margin of a newspaper. “I think so,” he agreed.
    “Now here’s my idea. I happened to be in Southampton recently and I saw the
Berengaria
leaving for the Tyne to be broken up. The papers said that she was sold for a hundred thousand. There’s another big ship, the
Hellenic
lying there waiting to be sold for the same purpose. Now, why not buy her and fit her up for cruising?”
    Morrison almost gasped. “But, good Lord, you couldn’t!” he exclaimed. “They’re done, those ships: worn out: finished. Their plates are thin. Isn’t that the reason for them being broken up?”
    “No,” Bristow returned, “more frequently it’s because they’re out of date. But don’t worry about that. Suppose they
are
done for the Atlantic traffic. Remember that thrashing at full speed through