times
over. But now nine months had gone by and they had done nothing more.
Sarcastic letters now took the place of their former friendly and
encouraging correspondence. They were turning the screw. We now saw
clearly what their game was.
I
cabled a request for the return of our goods, minus a consignment or
two to cover their advance to us. "Oh no!" said they, in effect. "The
whole of your twenty shipments is our security."
"Very
well," we cabled back, "we have instructed our bank to pay you with
interest what we owe you, and please hand their representatives in New
York all the shipments we entrusted to you."
But
naturally that was not sufficient to settle them. They were out for our
blood. If you can make a few hundred thousand dollars quickly, just
like that, the temptation is not easily resisted. What was their reply
to our offer? They said to the bank's representative in New York, "We
cannot hand you twenty consignments containing thousands of valuable
pearls unless you sign a document that all these pearls are as we have
received them and that no sort of claim shall be set up against us for
substitution."
This the representative naturally refused to do, such a thing being unheard of, and cabled us for instructions.
The
position was now apparently this: if we cabled him to give the
undertaking demanded, we might lay ourselves open to get back totally
different goods, for the intention of doing us in some way was by now
quite manifest to us, ten thousand miles away though we were. But in
the ordinary course we would have had no means of giving him a way of
checking the goods to his own satisfaction. In the meantime, too, there
would have been the danger that the loan to us might have become
overdue and that our amiable correspondents might then take advantage
of such delay and, by foreclosing, ruin us.
But
by my method of records I was able to stop that game, for I cabled
instructions that duplicate copies of my detailed records of every
single pearl in every shipment—which I had
