Mycroft Holmes And The Bankers' Conclave (The Mycroft Holmes Adventure series Book 4) Read online

  Mycroft Four

  Mycroft Holmes and the Case of the Bankers Conclave

  “Tobias! I say, Tobias!”

  Under normal circumstances Mycroft Holmes spoke very quietly in a pleasant baritone. This request for his young assistant was couched in a shout that was almost a yell. Mycroft Holmes was the elder brother of the great consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. He played a vital role in the Government of the United Kingdom in his role as Auditor of all Government Departments, the one man in Whitehall who could see how the policies of different departments would relate to each other and to the broader purposes of the administration.

  This particular request did not relate to great matters of state as his young assistant Tobias discovered when he returned to his desk from the telegraph office next door to Mycroft’s room.

  “What is the matter, sir? Is there some great problem with the Government accounts? The customs receipts down again?”

  “None of those, Tobias,” said Mycroft crossly. “Look at this! Just look at what’s happened to my Turkish Delight!” Every day Tobias filled two bowls with the delicacies from Istanbul for his master. Mycroft was holding up what must have once been a small cube of the stuff, dusted with icing sugar. Now it was less than half the normal size, with irregular patterns and small marks weaving their way across the surface.

  “It makes me feel quite ill, just looking at its deformed shape. Do you think the cleaners have been helping themselves to my Delights, Tobias?”

  “I can’t see that they would, sir. They’ve never done that before and it’s the same Irish lady who always does the work. She’s not changed at all.”

  “Well, what do you think the explanation is?”

  Nothing in Tobias’s sophisticated education, grammar school in Stratford upon Avon, King’s College Cambridge, top mark in his year for mathematics, had prepared him for this. But he could see that his master would be in a bad mood all day unless some action was taken.

  “I tell you what, sir. I’ll refill that bowl with fresh stuff and take those ruined ones round to the shop where I buy them. It’s only in Jermyn Street round the corner. The chap there will know what’s going on, I’m sure he will.”

  Mycroft popped a fresh, undamaged, Turkish Delight into his mouth and leant back in his chair. His enormous desk, covered everywhere with papers, documents, annual reports, audited accounts was twelve feet long. On the wall behind it a further selection of files marched along the wall. This was one third of Mycroft’s world. The other two thirds were provided by his apartment in Pall Mall and the silent quarters of the Diogenes Club close by where you were only allowed to speak in the Stranger’s Room. Even Mycroft, with all his powers, did not know the extent to which his routine was about to be disturbed and his peace destroyed. His brother Sherlock conducted a general consulting detective practise ranging from murder to missing persons. Mycroft was always reluctant to exercise his powers and, on the rare occasions when he did exert himself, it was frequently on Government business to do with money and high finance. And there was a crucial difference between the great majority of Sherlock Holmes’s cases, as narrated by Dr Watson, and this Mycroft adventure. Sherlock’s affairs always began after a crime had been committed. Solving the mystery became a matter of deduction and the use of analytical powers. This current matter, however, turned on Mycroft’s ability to prevent something happening, to head off a disaster that could have had a severe impact on the state of the nation. It was, indeed, his work on this case that led to Mycroft being recommended for a knighthood, an honour he is believed to have said he would turn down, not wishing to be brought forth into the limelight and the fickle touch of fame.

  Tobias returned, slipping into his seat with a couple of boxes heavily bound with string. “I’ve brought some fresh supplies, sir,” he announced, “but I’m afraid the news is not good. The news from Jermyn Street, that is.”

  “Tell me the worst,” said Mycroft, with the air of a man waiting to learn of bereavement at the very least.

  “It’s mice, the man said, those marks on the Turkish Delight. He said he’d seen this before, sir. But he thought our ones might be bigger than normal, with slightly larger teeth. Half way to a rat, that was his opinion.”

  “My God, Tobias,” cried Mycroft, “I’ve had a horror of rodents of every description since I was a small child. Sherlock used to tease me about it. He once put a dead rat in my bed, I’ll never forget it. You’d better send for the porters. They can sort the matter out.”

  Ten minutes later two men were crawling along the sides of the room, pulling up the occasional floorboard and muttering to each other as they went about their work. There was a sound of rushing feet in the corridor outside. Another porter handed a message to Tobias.

  “Well?” said Mycroft. He never opened letters or messages.

  “This is very strange, sir. It’s from the Governor of the Bank of England. He’s coming to see you on a matter of great urgency. He should be here in a moment. But this is the strange thing. He says that his staff have been trying to ring us up for hours. They’ve tried the telegraph too. They can’t get through.”

  “My God,” said Mycroft. “You don’t suppose the vermin have been eating the cables as well as the Turkish Delight? You may depend on it, Tobias, our channels of communication with the wider world will have been ruined by a set of smelly rats with long tails and sharp teeth. We may need the services of the Pied Piper of Hamelin soon. You’d better go and check.”

  Tobias passed the Governor in the corridor. When he checked the cables, everything looked normal. But there was no line to be heard on the telephone and the telegraph connection had also gone dead. He got down on his hands and knees and traced the two cables back to the point where they came out of the wall. The mice must have eaten through them somewhere in the cavities and the area underneath the floorboards. When he checked with his colleagues in The Treasury on the two floors below, the story was the same. Total silence to and from the outside world. One of the younger Treasury men told Tobias with great glee that this was the best thing that happened for years.

  “Just think of it, Tobias,” he cried, “we couldn’t have done it better ourselves! No more bloody Government Departments endlessly bombarding us by phone and telegraph about how they need more money immediately for projects of great national importance that turn out to be digging a hole in the road in Wolverhampton!”

  The Governor was still pacing up and down Mycroft’s office when Tobias returned, his eyes staring ahead, wringing his hands. Mycroft, a large and portly figure, waited quietly in his chair, his right hand twirling a gold pen round and round.

  “The nation is in peril, Mr Auditor. I feel as our forebears must have felt when Philip of Spain’s Armada was on the High Seas, or in the dark days when Napoleon was mobilising his vast army across the Channel in Boulogne. And here am I, a tea merchant, six weeks in post, right in the firing line.”

  “Come, Governor, things cannot be quite that bad. Nobody is threatening to invade us, are they? Tell me what the problem is. And do take a seat, Governor, you’re making me feel seasick walking up and down all the time.”

  The Governor sat down. He put his head in his hands. Then he blew his nose very vigorously. Some reserve of strength seemed to come to him.

  “You can sum up our problem in one word,” he said. “Gorings, that’s what our trouble is.”

  “But they’re one of the oldest and most reputable houses in the City! What on earth has been going on?” r />
  “One word can explain what’s been going on. When I die, Mr Auditor, which may be soon, they will find Argentina written on my heart!”

  Tobias remembered that they didn’t grow tea in Argentina. The Governor must have known little of the place. “There has been a lot of imprudent business going on in that Gorings Temple in Bishopsgate,” he continued. “Let me just give you the general picture, Mr Auditor. Gorings have been lending money to Argentina for years. It appeared likely that the Latin Americans would be able to service their loans. In recent years they have lent heavily to the central and regional governments. Gorings have also lent heavily on mortgages secured on distressed land where nothing will ever grow, no profits will be made and the borrowers will be forced to default. Now there has been a general collapse of confidence in Argentina, blended with political instability.”

  Tobias was delighted at the usage of the word blended from the tea merchant Governor of the Bank of England, but he held his peace.

  “Four months ago Gorings agreed to buy up a gas and electricity company in Buenos Aires for an enormous sum of over ten million pounds, the money to be made over in three tranches. The second and largest instalment is due in the next seventy two hours. Gorings are unable to pay it. They only came to me this morning with the news.”

  The Governor paused. Mycroft passed him a Turkish Delight and lit one of his pungent cigarettes of strong Virginia.

  “Well, Governor, this is a pretty pass indeed. I have been involved in similar problems, not in this country but in Europe and beyond. We Government Auditors like to stick together in bad times as well as good. Would you like my advice, sir?”

  “There is nothing I would like more,” replied the Governor, chewing vigorously on his Turkish Delight.

  “The first thing, Governor, is to get a firm grip on the facts. Once we know the full extent of Goring’s obligations, the money they have in hand, the money they are due to pay out, the total of all their loans and acceptances, the monies lent on mortgage and any other transactions that can be discerned by a trained eye, we can plan accordingly. We need to know if they are insolvent, meaning, as you know, that they haven’t any money left and there’s nothing due to come in, or merely illiquid – they have the assets but won’t be able to realise them quickly enough to meet their obligations. And we need the answers in a matter of hours.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr Auditor. I shall put my best man onto it at once. But I haven’t told you the worst, I’m afraid.”

  “Which is?”

  “I have tried to set up a meeting with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He says he cannot see me for another ten days, he is so busy. I have tried to set up a meeting with the Napoleon of finance, Lord Millman. He also refuses to meet with me.”

  With that the Governor of the Bank of England picked up his stick and headed for the door. “I shall be in touch by messenger. God save the City of London!”

  Mycroft stared at the vanishing Governor. Then he lit another cigarette. “This is a pretty pass, Tobias. Tell me, did those fellows in the telegraph room say how long the repairs would take?”

  “A couple of days, they said, sir, maybe more.”

  Mycroft shook his head rather sadly. “We’re going to have a catastrophe on our hands, Tobias!”

  “Do you mean the possible financial collapse, sir?”

  “Not that. We are going to have to move offices. Can you sort it out, Tobias? We could go to the Diogenes Club, but it might be a bit tricky, what with not being able to speak. I leave it with you. Can you do three things for me? Can you get me all the latest information about Latin America and Gorings, financial Press, back copies of The Economist and so on? Do you suppose there is some fellow in the Foreign Office who will know about Argentina? And can you get Jaikie and another Du Cane Road Irregular here as fast as possible? We’re going to need a lot of messengers running around.”

  Jaikie was a member of a gang of ragamuffin children named after the road they operated from in Hammersmith. They ran errands for the convict who actually ran Wormwood Scrubs Prison, Chalky the Shotgun White, as well as for Tobias and Mycroft a couple of afternoons a week. Jaikie had been involved with Mycroft in a number of previous adventures.

  “I’ll get on to Jaikie straight away, sir. Chalky the Shotgun White has got a telephone in his rooms now. I’ll ring him from the Foreign Office.”

  “Good,” said Mycroft, “I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back shortly.”

  Tobias stared at his master. This was like being told that the sun revolved round the earth or that the Sun King in Versailles had abdicated to spend more time with his mistress and his family. Mycroft did not do walks. Never, in the eighteen months of his employment, had Tobias seen him go for a walk. It was impossible.

  “It’s the shock,” he said to Tobias, as he waddled out of the door towards the wide open spaces of the capital. “Moving house. You know how I hate change.”

  Half an hour later Tobias had secured a number of offers of alternative accommodation. Mycroft returned from his walk, looking, if anything, even crosser than he had been when he left.

  “I’ve got three places where we could go, sir,” said Tobias, anxious to get the disagreeable business of moving out of the way as soon as possible.

  “I have never seen the point of going for walks,” Mycroft announced, “one foot after another, the view not changing much, the parks pretending to be in the damned countryside, prams everywhere. If I see another nanny in a starched hat I’m going to shout out loud.” He collapsed into the chair in front of his desk, breathing heavily like a grampus or some other large beached creature. “Tell me the worst, Tobias. Where might we lay our weary heads?”

  “The Foreign Office can lend us a large office belonging to the Permanent Under Secretary, sir. He’s going fishing in Scotland. The India Office have a suite of offices available. They’re not very far away from here. And the Parthenon in Pall Mall can offer a reading room on the ground floor. They’d like you to rejoin their bridge club, sir.”

  Mycroft had been banned from all competitive bridge leagues in London several years before. His mental powers made him so superior at the game that his opponents could never win. They took their revenge by blackballing him.

  “Pshaw!” he said. “I know they’re close but I don’t fancy the India Office or the Foreign Office. Once those places get their clutches into a person you’d have to spend most of the day in meetings. Meetings in those places become a substitute for thought or action of any kind. We’ll take the Parthenon, Tobias. It’s close to my rooms. Of course we’ll still have to spend a lot of the time here.” Mycroft stared at the documents that littered his desk, the files lined up in his bookshelves as he might have looked at a favourite nephew or a beloved painting. “I couldn’t move my papers.” He popped another Turkish Delight and massaged his calf. “I wonder if I haven’t got a sprain with that unaccustomed exercise, Tobias. Don’t let me ever do such a thing again.”

  Mycroft limped slowly to a corner of his great office and returned with some folders. “Somewhere in here Tobias, there should be accounts of previous great crises in the banking world. I’ve met that chap who runs Gorings, Lord Basildon. Arrogant fellow. Thought he owned everything. It should be easy being a banker, Tobias. Take the money in, pay as little interest as you can. Lend it out to respectable people at the highest rate you dare. Pocket the difference between the two interest rates and you get rich. But slowly. Nowadays the bankers and everybody else want to get rich today, if not half an hour ago, so they chase round after all sorts of hare brained schemes. They take too many risks.” Mycroft paused and looked at one of his papers. He began to laugh. His great stomach began to shake with mirth.

  “Have you heard of Poyais, Tobias?”

  “No, sir, Is it a place or a tribe perhaps?”

  “It’s a place,” Mycroft continued, “said to lie in British Honduras between Guatemala and Nicaragua. Round about the end of the Napoleonic Wars a man called
Gregor Macgregor, a soldier and adventurer, got involved in various liberation movements in that part of the world. And the City, God bless it, was having one of its fits of irrational exuberance by buying Latin American bonds and Latin American securities as if they were as safe as the Bank of England. This Macgregor decided to cash in. He floated and sold £200,000 worth of Poyais bonds. He produced a guide book under a false name describing the benign climate, the friendly natives of the little country, the fledgling democracy. He sold land to settlers, some of whom actually turned their British money into the Poyais currency and set out on chartered boats to make a new life in Central America.”

  “What happened to them, sir? Are their descendants still there? Is there a Poyais cricket team perhaps? Poyais United football club?”

  “I fear not, Tobias. The place didn’t exist. The investors lost all their money. Many of the settlers died. Macgregor had invented the whole thing. But it just shows that gullibility never really goes away.”

  There was an enormous bang from the machine room next door as if half the floorboards had been pulled up in one go.

  “Can you go and settle us into the Parthenon, Tobias? I need to send a number of telegraphs to my fellow Government auditors and financiers. If I dictate some of them to you now, you could go ahead and dispatch them. Do you know, I think this wretched bank Gorings is going to collapse unless we can act decisively. It is simply too large to be allowed to go under.”

  Mycroft leant back in his chair and closed his eyes. Tobias could see that the great brain was purring into action. Governor of the Bank of France, he said. Managing Director of JP Morgan in Wall Street. Governor of the National Bank in St Petersburg. In all cases the message was the same. Tobias whistled to himself as he closed his notebook and prepared to set off.

  “Sir, Jaikie is without, and that tall friend of his, Wee Robert. What shall I tell them?”

  “Send Jaikie to the Bank of England, Tobias, and tell him to wait for the Governor’s report into Gorings. He’s to wait for as long as it takes. The other fellow can await instructions.”