Page:Facts, failures and frauds- revelations, financial, mercantile, criminal.djvu/178

103 TACTS, rAILI'IIES, AKD TKAUBS. not hesitate to advance the required amount. In July and August of 1854, they advanced Cole £30,000 on warrants for spelter and tin. This was but the first of a series of transactions to the amount of £100,000, the loans being either renewed, or the amount paid up when falling due.

Proceeding on an ever-expanding scale in his operations, and accounted generally honourable in his dealings, and successful in his enterprises, Cole began to be looked on as a first-class man of business. The year 1853 opened up propitiously for all concerned. The difficulties that had occurred in passing the Hagen Wharf warrant had been arranged. The transactions of Cole the preceding year had reached very nearly £2,000,000, and there was the certainty of his business continuing to enlarge. He had already nearly obtained a monopoly in one class of metals. His agents Davidson and Gordon, with other subordinates in his scheme, remained faithful, and nothing indicated any floating suspicion in the public mind of its existence. These calculations were vain. Messrs. Overend, Gurney, and Co., in the spring of the year, sent down a broker to Hagen's Wharf to examine into the copper and spelter represented by warrants in their possession, furnished them by Davidson and Gordon, whose report was unsatisfactory, but, strange to say, they never disclosed the fact to the public.

Maltby's hands at this time are full of business, and, in the few brief moments of respite, he begins to think the remuneration for his services (£130 per annum) quite disproportioned to the labour exacted, as well as unequal to the support of his family. Quarter-day comes, but again and again he has to apply to Cole Brothers before receiving the amount due. What with his daily toil, and increasing necessities, and hope deferred, his mind is pre-occupied, and his spirit depressed. This is just what Cole designs, that Maltby, whose disposition he has studied, may be little inclined to reflect on the possible appreciation which the great house of Cole Bro-