Хэммонд Иннес - Nothing to Lose [= Campbell’s Kingdom]

I imagine that you are fully informed of the circumstances of my imprisonment. However, in case you should have attributed your mother’s belief in my innocence to filial loyalty, here is the testimony of a man who, when you receive this letter, will be dead:

I, Stuart Macaulay Campbell, swear before God and on His Holy Book that everything I did and said in connection with the flotation of an oil company in London known as the Rocky Mountain Oil Exploration Company was done and said in all good faith and that every word of that section of the prospectus dealing with the oil possibilities in the territory now commonly known as “Campbell’s Kingdom” was true to the best of my knowledge and belief, based on more than twelve years in the Turner Valley field and neighboring territories. And may the Lord condemn me to the everlasting fires of hell if this testimony be false.

Signed: Stuart Macaulay Campbell.

After my release I returned to Canada to prove what I knew to be true. With the help of kind friends I formed the Campbell Oil Exploration Company. All my shares in this I leave to you, together with the territory in which my bones will rest. If you are the man I hope you are, you will accept this challenge, that I may rest in peace and my life be justified to the end. May the Good Lord guide you and keep you in this task and may success, denied to me by the frailty of old age, attend your efforts.

Your humble and grateful grandfather

P.S. The diary of my efforts to prove the existence of oil up here you will find with my Bible. S.M.C.

I read it through again, more slowly. Every word carried weight — and his honesty and simplicity shone through it like a clean wind out of the high mountains. I had a feeling of guilt at having accepted so readily the verdict of the courts, at never having troubled to discover what he had done on leaving prison. And suddenly I found myself kneeling on the floor, swearing before a God whom I had scarcely troubled to get to know in the whole of my thirty-six years that whatever remained to me of life I would dedicate to the legacy my grandfather had left me. As I rose to my feet I realized that I was no longer afraid, no longer alone. I had a purpose and an urgency.

The other papers which Fothergill had left me seemed prosaic and dull after reading what my grandfather had written. There was the will, and it appointed Messrs. Donald McCrae and Acheson, solicitors, as executors. There was a letter from them, and attached to it was a deed of sale for my signature: “There is no question of obtaining a better offer. Please deliver the signed deed to Mr. Fothergill, of Anstey, Fothergill and Anstey, who represent us in London.”

Every line of their letter took it for granted that I should agree to sell. I tossed it back onto the table, and as I did so, I caught sight of the newspaper cutting lying on the floor where I had dropped it. I picked it up and continued reading where I had left off:

— Only those whose values are entirely material will belittle his efforts because time has proved him wrong. He was a man of boundless energy and he squandered it recklessly in pursuit of the will-o’-the-wisp of black gold. But people who know him best, like Johnny Carstairs and Jean Lucas, the young Englishwoman who for the last few years had housekept for him during the summer months, declare that it was not the pursuit of riches that drove him in his later years, but the desire to prove himself right and to recover the losses suffered by so many people who invested in his early ventures.

Like so many of the old-timers, he was a God-fearing man and a great character. His phrase — There’s oil in the Rocky Mountains — has become a part of the oil man’s vocabulary, denoting an area not worth surveying; but who knows?

Someday perhaps he’ll be proved right. In the meantime, local people, headed by Mr. Will Polder, are organizing a fund to raise a monument to the memory of “King” Campbell.

I put the cutting down and sat staring at the wall, seeing only the little log cabin high up in the Rockies and the old man whose hopes had died so hard. “There’s oil in the Rocky Mountains.” It would be something to prove the phrase true, to wipe out the stigma that had haunted me all my early life, to prove him innocent. I had something to bite on now — an objective, a purpose. And somehow it lessened the shock of Maclean-Hervey’s pronouncement.

I was suddenly possessed with an urge to see Campbell’s Kingdom, to discover for myself something of the faith, the indomitable hope, that had sent my grandfather back there after conviction and imprisonment. It couldn’t have been an easy decision for him. The newspaper cutting had hinted that many people out there had lost heavily through backing him. It must have been hell for him. And yet he had gone back.

I got up and began to pace back and forth. Failure and twenty-two years of utter loneliness had not destroyed his faith. His letter proved that. If I could take up where he had left off—

It was absurd. I’d no knowledge of oil, no money. And yet — the alternative was to sign that deed of sale. I went over to the table and picked it up. If I signed it, Fothergill had said I might get $10,000 out of it in six months’ time. It would pay for my funeral, that was about all the good it would be to me. To sign it was unthinkable.

And then it gradually came to me that what had at first seemed absurd was the most reasonable thing for me to do, the only thing. To remain in London, an insurance clerk in the same monotonous rut to the end, was impossible with this prospect, this hope of achievement dangled in front of my eyes. I tore the deed of sale across and flung the pieces onto the floor. I would go to Canada. I would try to carry out the provisions of my grandfather’s will...

It took me just a week to get to Calgary. Since this included a night’s flying across the Atlantic and two and a half days by train across Canada, I think I’d id pretty well. It did not take me long to clear up my own affairs, and the major obstacle was foreign exchange. I got over this by emigrating, and here I had two slices of luck: Maclean-Hervey knew the high commissioner, and the Canadian Government was subsidizing immigrant travel by air via Trans-Canada.

The night before we reached Calgary, just after we had left Moose Jaw, the colored attendant brought a telegram to my sleeper. It was from Donald McCrae and Acheson:

IMPORTANT YOU COME DIRECT TO OUR OFFICES. CALGARY. PURCHASERS HAVE GIVEN US TILL TOMORROW NIGHT TO COMPLETE DEAL. THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO DISPOSE OF PROPERTY. SIGNED, ACHESON.

They were certainly a very thorough and determined firm. They’d have me sell whether I wanted to or not. Like Fothergill, they found it impossible to accept my attitude.

We arrived at Calgary at 8:30 A.M. I had breakfast and then rang Acheson’s office and was requested to come right along. The firm of Donald McCrae and Acheson had their offices on the third floor in an old brick building among a litter of oil companies. There were four doors, the one on my immediate right being that of Donald McCrae and Acheson, But it was the name on the door to my left that caught my eye — THE ROGER FERGUS OIL DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, LTD. — for it was the name of the man who had backed my grandfather. The other two doors were occupied by LOUIS WINNICK, OIL CONSULTANT AND SURVEYOR, and HENRY FERGUS, STOCKBROKER. Under the latter, and newly painted in, was the name: THE LARSEN MINING AND DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, LTD.

I found myself strangely nervous. The atmosphere of the place was one of business and money. Sentiment seemed out of place. I went through the door marked DONALD MCCRAE AND ACHESON, SOLICITORS. A girl secretary asked me my business and showed me through into Acheson’s office. He was a big man, rather florid, with smooth cheeks that shone slightly, as though they had been rubbed with pumice stone.