Charles Snow - George Passant

‘It’s practically certain to be sent on.’

‘Everyone else thinks the same? Eden and the others?’

‘Yes.’

‘I entirely disagree,’ said George.

Jack turned on him.

‘We know what you’re thinking of,’ said Jack. ‘You’re not concerned about getting us off. You just believe that will happen. What you’re frightened of — is that your private life may be dragged out. And your precious group. The whole thing for you is wrapped up with your good intentions. You ought to realise that we haven’t got time for those now.’

Jack had spoken freshly, intimately, brutally; George did not reply, and for minutes sat in silence.

Jack walked up and down the room. He talked a good deal, and assumed that the tactics were settled.

‘If I’d had the slightest idea the hostels would come back on us — I could have worked it out some other way,’ he said. ‘It would have been just as easy. There was no earthly reason for choosing the way I did. If anyone had told me there was the faintest chance that I was letting us in for this — waiting —’

‘You needn’t blame yourself. More than us,’ said Olive.

‘I’m not blaming myself. Except for not looking after everything. Next time I do anything, I shall keep it all in my hands.’

‘Next time. We’ve got a long way to go before then,’ said Olive.

‘I’m not so sure,’ said Jack. He sat down by her side.

She looked at him with the first sign of violent strain she had shown that night. I knew she feared that he was thinking of escape: as I had feared the moment he spoke of Morcom’s offer.

‘We can make something of it,’ she said.

‘I suppose we can.’

‘You’re afraid there’s a bad patch to go through first?’

‘I shan’t be sorry when it’s over.’ He laid a hand on her knee, with a gesture for him clumsy and grateful. He was dominating the room no longer. He said: ‘I always told you I should get into the public eye. But I didn’t imagine it on such a grand scale.’

It surprised me that he, as much as George, was full of the fear of disgrace. Often of disgrace in its most limited sense — the questions, the appearance in the dock, the hours of being exposed to the public view. They would be open to all eyes in court. Jack could imagine himself cutting a dash — and yet he showed as great a revulsion as George himself.

‘Anyway, we’ve got some time,’ said Jack. ‘When are the assizes, actually?’

Then George spoke: ‘I can’t accept the view that this is bound to go beyond the police court. I have thought over your objections, and I refuse to believe that they hold water.’

‘We’ve told you why you refuse to believe it,’ said Jack casually. But there came an unexpected flash of the George of years before. He said loudly: ‘I don’t regard you as qualified to hold an opinion. This is a point of legal machinery, and Lewis and I are the only people here capable of discussing it. I don’t propose to give you the responsibility.’

‘Jack is right,’ said Olive. ‘You’re thinking of nothing but the group.’

‘I’m thinking of ending this affair with as little danger as possible to all concerned,’ said George. ‘It’s true that I have to take other people into account. But, from every point of view, this ought to be settled in the police court. Of course, wherever it’s tried, if they understood the law of evidence, our private lives are utterly irrelevant. But in certain circumstances they might find an excuse to drag them into the court. In the police court they can’t go so far. Lewis can make them keep their malice to themselves.’

‘Is that true?’ said Olive.

I hesitated.

‘I don’t think they will bring it up there. They will be too busy with the real evidence.’

‘You’re still quite certain that, even if we show our defence, they’ll clearly send us for trial?’ said Jack.

‘You’re exaggerating the case against us,’ said George. ‘And even if you weren’t, it’s worth the risk. I admit that I want to save other people from unpleasantness as well as myself. But since you’re so concentrated on practical results’ — he said to Jack — ‘I might remind you that our chances are considerably better if that unpleasantness is never raised.’

Olive asked: ‘Do you agree?’

‘If there were a decent chance of finishing it in the police court,’ I said, ‘of course George would be right. But I can’t believe—’

‘You can’t pretend there’s no chance of finishing it,’ George said. ‘I want you to give a categorical answer.’

The others looked at me. I said: ‘I can’t say there’s no chance. There may be one in ten. We can’t rule it out for certain.’

‘Then I insist that we leave the possibility open. I reject the suggestion that we automatically let it go for trial. If you see a chance, even if it’s not absolutely watertight, we shall want you to take it.’ George raised his voice, and spoke to the other two in the assertive, protective tone of former days: ‘You’ve got to understand it’s important for both of you. As well as myself. You realise that the prejudice against us might decide the case.’

‘So long as they get us off the fraud—’ Jack said.

‘I’ve got to impress on you that the sort of prejudice they may raise is going to be the greatest obstacle to getting us off the fraud,’ George said. ‘You can’t separate them. That’s why I insist on every conceivable step being taken to finish it before they can insult us in the open.’

Olive said to me: ‘George is convincing me.’

I said: ‘I can’t go any further than this: if there’s any sign of a chance on the twenty-ninth, I’ll go for it. But I warn you, there’s not the slightest sign so far.’

Jack said: ‘If we let you do that, it isn’t for George’s reasons. You realise that?’ he said to George. ‘You can’t expect—’

George said: ‘I intend to be listened to. I’ve let you override me too easily before. This time it’s too important to allow myself to be treated as you want.’

THEY appeared before the magistrates’ court in the town hall on 29 December 1932.

In the week before, I had gone over the whole case with Eden and Hotchkinson. I explained to them that, if the unlikely happened and a chance opened, I might risk going for an acquittal on the spot. They both disagreed; I knew that they were right and that they thought I was losing my judgment; for I could not give them the real reason. I was contemplating a risk which, on the legal merits of the case, I should never have taken.

Eden was puzzled, for he knew that I had the case analysed and mastered. It was not an intricate one, but slightly untidy in a legal sense. It depended on a few points of fact, not at all on points of law.

The substance of the case was this: the evidence of fraud over the agency was slight, apart from one definite fact, the discordant information upon the circulation of the Arrow . The evidence over the farm and hostels was much stronger, but with no such definite fact. There were several suspicious indications, but the transactions had been friendly, with no written documents except the receipts. (The largest loans were two sums of £750 each from acquaintances of Jack’s, and £500 from Miss Geary.)

There existed no record of the information which was supposed to have been given. This was, so the prosecution were to claim, deliberately untrue in two ways: (1) by the receipts of the hostels being falsely quoted — those of the farm itself, by manipulating the figures of the money spent there by George and his friends from ’24 to ’31; (2) by Jack pretending to have managed such hostels himself and giving details on that authority.