The Trojan Horse (12 page)

‘I'll buy it,' I said.

He suddenly laughed. ‘Why, he does, you old fool – he does. Haven't you read the papers? They've made him Director of Aero Engine Production. Neat – eh? You go and buy as many Calboyds as you can get hold of, old boy. They're offered at around 42s.
6d
. this morning. Take my word for it, they're going to a fiver at least.'

‘Listen,' I said. ‘What I want to know is, who controls the outfit?'

‘Why worry about that, old boy? You can't lose on it. I've put my shirt on 'em already.'

‘Well,' I said, ‘I'm not buying till I know who controls the group.'

‘What's it matter? Calboyd owns a big interest and Ronald Dorman – you know, the issuing house – got stuck with a lot. God! He must be coining money on them now. Think of it, man! He took up damn'
near the whole lot of that Ordinary share issue in 1937 at par – quite apart from the Preferences, that would be a matter of two million shares.'

‘I know about Dorman,' I said, ‘But do you know anything about a John Burston and an Alfred Cappock?'

‘Never heard of them, old boy. They sound like brewers. But look here, why don't you go down and see Sedel? Nice boy, Sedel. Tell you everything.'

‘Who is Sedel?' I asked.

‘Max Sedel? He knows all about Calboyds. Fact is he knows a lot about the aircraft industry. Great lad. Tremendous worker. Come to think of it, it's incredible. The fellow came to this country just after the Reichstag fire business. He was an anti-Nazi. Escaped from Germany. Hadn't a bean. Didn't know the language. Came to us. Began up at the City Office under me. Then gravitated to the Fleet Street end as foreign editor. Now he's free-lancing and making a big income. First-class contacts. Industry is his subject – industry and foreign affairs. Tremendous output even in these times. Why I mention him is he wrote a couple of first-rate feature articles on Calboyds for one of the financial papers. Appeared only the other day. If you like to come back to the office with me, I'll show you the cuttings. But the thing to do is to go down and see Max.'

The lunch seemed to sober him up a bit, for by the time we got back to his office he was beginning to think of a lead for the last edition. His secretary brought me the file on Calboyds and I waded through
it. There were several articles on the company, mainly from the financial weeklies. But the two by Max Sedel stood out. They gave me a very clear insight into the financial structure and industrial position of the company. It was unmistakably a puff, but it was cleverly done and a wealth of information about the company was included. There was nothing, however, on the subject of control. I decided to go and see Max Sedel.

Following Henderson's instructions, I went down Copthall Avenue and turned into a rather dingy building. His office was on the first floor – ‘Max Sedel' was painted on the door and underneath, ‘Journalist and Publicist.' The interior might easily have been mistaken for a stockbroker's office. The walls were surrounded by filing cabinets. There were newspapers and papers everywhere. The room was occupied by two girls – one, I presumed, a plain typist and filing clerk, and the other, who came to find out what I wanted, his secretary.

I sent in my card and was shown into the inner office. Here was some attempt at order, and a cheerful fire burned in the grate. The central feature of the room was a heavy mahogany desk, and behind it was a plump little man with fair hair, little steel-grey eyes and an absurd sort of cavalry moustache. He rose to greet me. The hand he offered me was white and limp, and there was a gold signet ring on the little finger. My first impression of him was not favourable, but when he spoke I realised he had charm. His smile was pleasant and friendly, and there was an air of
courtliness in the way he offered me a cigarette – it was almost old-fashioned. But as I lit it, I was conscious of his eyes. He was young, but he was astute. I knew I should have to tread warily.

‘I am afraid I am about to waste some of your valuable time,' I said. ‘But I read your two articles on Calboyds. My impression was that you knew your subject. Now, a very old friend of mine has had a lot of money left her and she wants to invest it in the best interests of the nation, without of course losing sight of the object for which one does invest money. My inclination was towards Calboyds. But in this connection a point has arisen which I thought you, with your intimate knowledge of the company, might be able to clear up. I am always very careful about giving advice over investments. Frankly, I don't fancy it much – the responsibility is too great. A thing I always go for in these matters is the management and the control. Are they sound is the question I always ask myself. Now I find that in the case of Calboyds there are four big shareholders – Calboyd himself, two gentlemen who, as far as I know, are completely unknown in the world of finance, and Ronald Dorman, who may be backed by anyone. Who really controls Calboyds?' I don't know why I put the question so bluntly. My intuition told me, regardless of the cautious approach I had originally decided upon, that this was the way to obtain results. As I put the question, I raised my eyes and looked at him.

His cigarette was burning unheeded in his hand and those little steel-grey eyes were fixed on me as
though he would seek to know what was going on inside my head. In an instant the tenseness of his body relaxed. But it was an artificial relaxation. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled pleasantly. ‘I'm afraid you have caught me out, Mr Kilmartin,' he said. ‘I cannot tell you who controls the company. My concern at the time I was going into its affairs was simply to write it up from the point of view of both the general public and the investor. The question of control does not come within the scope of articles of that sort. Indeed, it would have been impertinent of me to make inquiries.'

Was it my imagination, or did I stand thus rebuked? But Sedel rose, smiling and holding out his hand to me, apologising for not having been more helpful.

As I walked down Copthall Avenue to Throgmorton Street, I could not rid myself of the memory of that moment of tension when I had put the question so bluntly. I hesitated in Throgmorton Street and, looking up at the doorway outside which I had stopped, realised that it led to the City Office of the
Record
. On a sudden impulse, I hurried up the stairs and into the office, where I inquired for Mr Henderson. ‘Sorry to bother you again,' I said, as I was shown into his office, ‘but I was rather interested in Sedel.'

‘Yes, he's an interesting person,' Henderson replied. His voice was brisk and he seemed to be his old dapper self again. The effect of the drink had apparently been dispersed by work.

‘Could you tell me a little more about him?' I asked.

‘I don't know that there's really much to tell.' He tapped his teeth with a silver pencil, at the same time waving me to a big leather-padded arm-chair. ‘He came to us in '33 as I told you. He had an introduction from Marburgs to our old man, you know, J. K. The fellow was pushed up here to make himself useful on the foreign side. He learnt quickly. He made good contacts. Believe it or not, within six months he could talk almost faultless English and was writing really good City stuff for us. His vocabulary was not large, but then that soon comes. I think it was in '35 he became foreign editor. He worked that job up to £1,250 a year and then in '37 he chucked it and set up on his own in the City. It seems incredible, doesn't it. He was in the country only four years before he had got so much highly-paid outside work that he could afford to give up a safe four-figure salary. Since then he's written three or four books, mostly on Germany. It's funny. He's terribly fond of Germany. But he hates the régime, curses the people for their folly in submitting to it. As I say, he hates the régime and thinks that it will ruin the country. Yet he thinks Germany will be the centre of the world within the next decade. Anyway, that's what I know of Max Sedel. He's a brilliant man and as a foreigner – he's naturalised of course – but as a foreigner born he's very much at home in the cosmopolitan world of the City. That's where he has the advantage of us English journalists. Here I am, the City Editor of a big evening paper. I
know all the heads of British industry, I know the bankers and the stockbrokers, but I don't know the City. It takes a man with a gift for tongues and a queer twist in him somewhere to be able to say he knows the City. But if you know the City, you know the secret of international politics. Everything that happens in Europe is hatched in this Square Mile. But I've drifted away from the point. I merely say that Sedel sees a side of the City that neither I nor any other British journalist ever sees – the side of the underground movement of Big Business through international affairs.'

‘But I suppose he has English contacts as well?' I asked.

‘You mean firms like Calboyds? Oh, rather. I tell you he's a first-rate journalist and a very clever business man. He's got a lovely place just outside Eastbourne. He's realised something that so few journalists ever realise, and that is that journalism can be the gateway to money. I think you'll find that he'll have bought Calboyds quite heavily. You see, if you know the right people at the right time, you can't help making money.'

I thanked him for what he had told me and took my leave. As I passed through the main office I heard a man who was running the tape through his hand exclaim, ‘Calboyds up another bob.' Outside I turned left and walked to the taxi rank in Lothbury. And as I drove down Queen Victoria Street and along the Embankment to Whitehall, I began to consider where to cast about next. The time factor was the trouble.
Given time, I might get somewhere. But already I had spent the better part of a day hunting round the City and had achieved nothing. Max Sedel had provided the only real interest of the day. I couldn't help feeling what a useful man he would be to Germany. But though he intrigued me, he had not been able to help me. By the time I arrived at the Admiralty, I had decided that the morning had been wasted and that the only thing to do was to try and get some sort of line on Dorman or the other two big holders. Somewhere there must be a clue to the link-up between Calboyds and Germany.

After a wait of nearly half an hour I was able to have a few words with Forbes-Pallister. I explained to him half the truth – that a friend of mine was working on a new type of diesel engine and that it was fitted to the boat. He promised to see that the order was rescinded. ‘Don't worry,' he said, as he saw me to the door of his office. ‘I'll fix it for you and I'll give you a ring when it has gone through. What's your number?'

‘Terminus 6795,' I told him. ‘If I'm not in, have your people leave a message, would you.'

As I walked up Whitehall, considering what line to follow up next, I remembered a fat smiling little man of the name of Evelyn Ward. He was a half-commission man, who was not above a little business blackmail and whom I got out of a tight corner once. I went to the nearest call-box and looked up his address. Then I crossed the Strand to Duncannon
Street and took a bus, for I wanted to think out the position before I reached Ward's office.

Ward specialised in gossip. In good years he made a bit on half-commission. But gossip was his speciality. And he made money out of it. It was not blackmail in the ordinary sense. In the first place, it was never personal gossip that interested him. In the second place, he never demanded money. His knowledge of the shady side of the City was encyclopaedic. It had to be. His consumption of liquor must have been colossal, but then so was his girth. His danger lay in the fact that he was popular. He was generally known as The Slug, or Slugsy to those who knew him well. He was a fat genial fellow, with a great moon of a face in which two little eyes twinkled, half-buried in flesh. His chins were a really noble sight, and his head, being to his disgust practically bald, was almost invariably covered by a broad black hat.

His usual line was options. Lounging round the bars, he would pick up a piece of gossip, overhear a scrap of conversation or buy the confidence of a junior clerk with a few drinks. He would then learn all there was to learn about the deal, and in due course he would approach the interested party, suggest that the information he had might be of use to the other side and evince a desire for an option on some of the shares of the company involved. He had explained to me rather ruefully at the time when I was defending him that it never failed to work. On that one occasion, he had failed to check up on his information as
thoroughly as he might have done and his proposition had fallen on honest and outraged ears. Nevertheless, he had known enough for me to convince the prosecution that it would be better to settle the matter out of court.

I arrived at the dingy little office at the top of a block in Drapers Gardens to find him out, and was directed to a well-known City club. He came out to meet me, a glass of whisky in his hand and his huge face glistening with sweat. His great podgy hand wrung mine and he took me into the club and bought me a drink. ‘Now, Mr Kilmartin,' he said, as we sat down at a little table to ourselves, ‘do you want to know what to put your savings into?' And his face screwed itself up into a great smile.

‘No,' I said. ‘I think I know the answer to that. Calboyds is the thing to buy. Am I right?'

‘Quite right,' he said. ‘But don't hold for too long.'

‘Why?' I asked.

He shrugged his wide padded shoulders. ‘Tell you the truth, I dunno. Just a hunch I got.'

‘What I want to know,' I said, leaning forward and speaking softly, ‘is who controls Calboyds?'

His eyes seemed to narrow slightly and he pushed his hat farther on to the back of his head. ‘There you've got me. If I knew, I might make a lot or I might – well, I might not. There's Ronald Dorman, of course. And then there's two other boys by the name of Burston and Cappock. Apart from old Calboyd, they're the big holders.'