“He’d have been Prime Minister,” Meg affirms devoutly. “Who else was there but him and Winston?”
Rick next passes to his Theory of Property which I have since heard him expound many times in many different ways but I believe this was its unveiling. The burden is that any money passing through Rick’s hands is subject to a redefinition of the laws of property, since whatever he does with it will improve mankind, whose principal representative he is. Rick, in a word, is not a taker but a giver and those who call him otherwise lack faith. The final challenge comes in a mounting bombardment of passionate, grammatically unnerving pseudo-Biblical phrases. “And if any one of you here present today — can find evidence of a single advantage — one single benefit — be it in the past, be it stored away for the future — directly or indirectly from this enterprise — which I have derived — ambitious though it may have been, make no two ways about it — let him come forward now, with a clear heart — and point the finger where it belongs.”
From there it is but a step to that sublime vision of the Pym & Salvation Coach Company Ltd., which will bring profit to piety and worshippers to our beloved Tabernacle.
The magic box is unlocked. Flinging back the lid Rick displays a dazzling confusion of promises and statistics. The present bus fare from Farleigh Abbott to our Tabernacle is twopence. The trolley bus from Tambercombe costs threepence, four-up in a cab from either spot costs sixpence, a Granville Hastings motor coach costs nine hundred and eight pounds discounted for cash, and seats thirty-two fully loaded, eight standing. On the sabbath alone — my assistants here have made a most thorough survey, gentlemen — more than six hundred people travel an aggregate of over four thousand miles to worship at this fine Tabernacle. Because they love the place. As Rick does. As we all do, every man and woman here present — let’s make no bones about it. Because they want to feel drawn from the circumference to the centre, in the spirit of their faith. (This last is one of Makepeace Watermaster’s own expressions and Syd says it was a bit cheeky of Rick to throw it back in his face.) On three other days in the week, gentlemen — Band of Hope, Christian Endeavour and Women’s League Bible Group — another seven hundred miles are travelled leaving three days clear for normal commercial operation, and if you don’t believe me watch my forearm as it beats the doubters from my path in a series of convulsive elbow blows, the cupped fingers never parting. From such figures it is suddenly clear there can be only one conclusion.
“Gentlemen, if we charge half the standard fare and give a free ticket to every disabled and elderly person, to every child under the age of eight — with full insurance — observing all the fine regulations which rightly apply to the operation of commercial transport carriages in this increasingly hectic age of ours — with fully professional drivers with every awareness of their responsibilities, god-fearing men recruited from our own number — allowing for depreciation, garaging, maintenance, fuel, ticketing and sundries, and assuming a fifty-percent capacity on the three days of commercial operation — there’s a forty-percent clear profit for the Appeal and room left over to see everybody right.”
Makepeace Watermaster is asking questions. The others are either too full or too empty to speak at all.
“And you’ve bought it?” says Makepeace.
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re not of age, half of you.”
“We used an intermediary, sir. A fine lawyer of this district who in his modesty wishes to remain anonymous.”
Rick’s reply draws a rare smile from the improbably tiny lips of Sir Makepeace Watermaster. “I never knew a lawyer who wished to remain anonymous,” he says.
Perce Loft frowns distractedly at the wall.
“So where is it now?” Sir Makepeace continues.
“What, sir?”
“The coach, boy.”
“They’re painting it,” says Rick. “Green with gold lettering.”
“With whose permission, at any stage, have you embarked on this project?” asks Watermaster.
“We’re asking Miss Dorothy to cut the tape, Sir Makepeace. We’ve drafted the invite already.”
“Who gave you permission? Did Mr. Philpott here? Did the deacons? Did the committee? Did I? To spend nine hundred and eight pounds of Appeal funds, widows’ mites, on a motor coach?”
“We 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.
“Where are the books?”
“Books, sir? There’s only one Book I know of—”
“Your files, boy. Your figures. You alone kept the accounts, we heard.”
“Give me a week, Sir Makepeace. I’ll account for every penny.”
“That’s not keeping accounts. That’s fudging them. Did you learn nothing at all from your father, boy?”
“Rectitude, sir. Humbleness before Jesus.”
“How much have you spent?”
“Not spent, sir. Invested.”
“How much?”
“Fifteen hundred. Rounded up.”
“Where’s the coach at present?”
“I said, sir. Being painted.”
“Where?”
“Balham’s of Brinkley. Coach-builders. Some of the finest Liberals in the county. Christians to a man.”
“I know Balham’s. TP sold timber to Balham’s for ten years.”
“They’re charging cost.”
“You propose to ply for trade in public, you say?”
“Three days a week, sir.”
“Using the public coach stages?”
“Certainly.”
“Are you familiar with the likely attitude to be taken by the Dawlish & Tambercombe Transport Corporation of Devon to this venture?”
“A 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.”
“Can’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.
“We invested the rent money too, sir.”
“That’s more than the fifteen hundred then.”
“Call it two thousand. Rounded up. I thought you only meant the Appeal money.”
“What about the collection money?”
“Some of it.”
“Counting all monies from any source, what’s the total capital? Rounded up.”
“Including 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?”
“Private clients.”
“Of 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.
“Sir Makepeace, I am not at liberty to reveal this. When P.S.C. promises confidentiality, that’s what she delivers. Our watchword is integrity.”
“Has the company been incorporated?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Security, sir. Keep it under wraps. Like I said.”