Flames Coming out of the Top Read Free Page B

Li, in Hong Kong, the biggest of their agencies, maintained a steady eight thousand, and Mr. Ras, who represented the firm in Burma, had double the turnover of the whole South American business and never exceeded a modest stock figure of four thousand.
    To all appearances, indeed, Señor Muras was spending his time desperately importing goods from England only to hoard the stuff when it got there in his own strange store rooms in Amricante. On the face of it it seemed a fanciful and extravagantpastime; but Dunnett wondered whether it really should be considered on its face value at all. He had his own shrewd and unrevealed suspicion that the store rooms of the Compañia Muras might be quite bare and the pockets of Señor Muras exceedingly well lined.
    Mr. Govern evidently shared the suspicion. “You may find the whole thing’s a swindle,” he said. “In which case, cable me before you do anything.”
    â€œWhat sort of swindle?” Dunnett asked cautiously.
    â€œOh, just the ordinary sort,” Mr. Govern replied. “False stock accounts. You can’t trust these South American audits.”
    â€œAnd if it isn’t that?”
    â€œYou’ve got to stop there till you’ve found out what it is. It must be something, you know: a house doesn’t suddenly stop paying its bills without a reason.”
    â€œI’ll find out all right,” Dunnett answered him.
    â€œAnd cable me before you do anything,” Mr. Govern repeated. “I want to know what’s happening step by step. I’d rather send no one there than have things happening I haven’t been consulted about.”
    Mr. Govern was an active man and wanted to do everything himself. With his gift for organization he was convinced that no one else single-handed could perform even the simplest operation; and in the result no one else could.
    â€œGo along to Mr. Verking and get him to go through the stock sheets with you and mark it down to what it ought to be,” he said. “Only don’t actually post anything without showing it to me first. I want to know what you’re putting down.” Mr. Govern turned away and placed his finger on the bell for his secretary: it was his way of intimating that the interview was at an end.
    Mr. Verking was almost embarrassingly helpful. He derived a vicarious excitement from the trip which Dunnett was making. Like most really hard-boiled men he was extremely sentimental at heart. He looked at the young man about to embark on his first real adventure and his heart overflowedtowards him. “Beware of the tropics,” he warned him. “Once they get hold of you they won’t let you go again.”
    But it was in his advice on the manner of handling foreign personnel that Mr. Verking was most helpful. He was not handicapped by any neurotic weaknesses towards those races not fortunate enough to have been born English. He grouped together all those nationalities with whom he had been brought closely into contact—the Chinese, the Malays, the Argentinians—under one comprehensive and unflattering heading of unreliability, though he made a mental reservation in the case of the Chinese who were, he admitted, able to sit on the top of a stool and add up figures as well as the next man. But it had been a guiding principle with him that if any foreigner really showed himself at home with figures it is just as well to alter one’s signature at the bank and change the combination on the counting house safe.
    â€œDon’t spare ’em,” he advised. “Go slap in and see everything. If you give ’em time to clear up you won’t learn a thing. Walk straight in and lock the door on them. Don’t let them out again till you’re satisfied.”
    â€œI see,” said Harold Dunnett dubiously.
    â€œBully ’em.” Mr. Verking insisted. “That’s what it comes to. It’s their country and you mustn’t