Read Online A Perfect Spy by John le Carré - Free Book Online Page B

Did I? To spend nine hundred and eight pounds of Appeal funds, widows’ mites, on a motor coach?”
    â€œWe wanted the element of surprise, Sir Makepeace. We wanted to sweep the board with them. Once you spread the word beforehand, talk it round town, you take the air out of it. P.S.C. is going to be sprung upon an unsuspecting world.”
    Makepeace now enters what Syd calls the dicey part.
    â€œWhere are the books?”
    â€œBooks, sir? There’s only one Book I know of—”
    â€œYour files, boy. Your figures. You alone kept the accounts, we heard.”
    â€œGive me a week, Sir Makepeace. I’ll account for every penny.”
    â€œThat’s not keeping accounts. That’s fudging them. Did you learn nothing at all from your father, boy?”
    â€œRectitude, sir. Humbleness before Jesus.”
    â€œHow much have you spent?”
    â€œNot spent, sir. Invested.”
    â€œHow much?”
    â€œFifteen hundred. Rounded up.”
    â€œWhere’s the coach at present?”
    â€œI said, sir. Being painted.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œBalham’s of Brinkley. Coach-builders. Some of the finest Liberals in the county. Christians to a man.”
    â€œI know Balham’s. TP sold timber to Balham’s for ten years.”
    â€œThey’re charging cost.”
    â€œYou propose to ply for trade in public, you say?”
    â€œThree days a week, sir.”
    â€œUsing the public coach stages?”
    â€œCertainly.”
    â€œAre you familiar with the likely attitude to be taken by the Dawlish & Tambercombe Transport Corporation of Devon to this venture?”
    â€œA popular demand like this—those boys can’t block it, Sir Makepeace. We’ve got God driving for us. Once they see the ground-swell, feel the pulse, they’ll back away and give us our heads all the way to the top. They can’t stop progress, Sir Makepeace, and they can’t stop the march of Christian people.”
    â€œCan’t they,” says Sir Makepeace, and scribbles figures on a piece of paper in front of him. “There’s eight hundred and fifty pound in rent money missing as well,” he remarks as he writes.
    â€œWe invested the rent money too, sir.”
    â€œThat’s more than the fifteen hundred then.”
    â€œCall it two thousand. Rounded up. I thought you only meant the Appeal money.”
    â€œWhat about the collection money?”
    â€œSome of it.”
    â€œCounting all monies from any source, what’s the total capital? Rounded up.”
    â€œIncluding private investors, Sir Makepeace—”
    Watermaster sat up straight: “So we’ve private investors too, have we? My gracious, boy, you’ve been going it a bit. Who are they?”
    â€œPrivate clients.”
    â€œOf whom?”
    Perce Loft looks as though he is about to fall asleep out of sheer boredom. His eyelids are two inches long, his goatish head has slipped forward on his neck.
    â€œSir Makepeace, I am not at liberty to reveal this. When P.S.C. promises confidentiality, that’s what she delivers. Our watchword is integrity.”
    â€œHas the company been incorporated?”
    â€œNo, sir.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œSecurity, sir. Keep it under wraps. Like I said.”
    Makepeace begins jotting again. Everybody waits for more questions. None come. An uncomfortable air of completeness settles over Makepeace, and Rick senses it faster than anybody. “It was like being up the old doctor’s, Titch,” Syd told me, “when he’s made up his mind what you’re dying of, only he’s got to write out this prescription before he gives you the good news.”
    Rick speaks again. Unprompted. It was the voice he used when he was cornered. Syd heard it then, I heard it later only twice. It was not a pretty tone at all.
    â€œI could bring those accounts up to you this evening, as a matter of fact, Sir Makepeace.