The War Chest by Porter Hill Page A

distant, alien land was not as terrifying as the prospect of death in one’s homeland.
    Reading these thoughts, Spencer wondered what kind of relationship a son had with his father when he could write to him about such ideas instead of gossiping about cousins and marriages and blisters, and too much rice and not enough potatoes. Spencer pictured the red-nosed tradesman who had sired him and felt a strange, new jealousy of Horne.
    Despite the fact that it was no normal letter home, the pages contained no mention of any mission, no facts which Horne might have deduced from Watson and was passing on to his father. The Honourable East India Company was insisting that there must be no hint to anyone—not evenfamily, especially an influential family like Horne’s—about the assignment to seize the French war chest. Ramifications were going to be difficult enough without unnecessary inquiries. The undertaking was volatile.
    Putting aside the letter, Spencer rang a silver bell on the table to summon his secretary. The letter could be resealed and given back to Goodair to deliver in London. Spencer also made a mental note that Goodair must somehow be rewarded by the Company for his co-operation in handing over the letter. Perhaps a ceremonial sword, something given to him at a Company banquet, something to make the old man swell his pigeon chest.
    As he sat waiting, Spencer decided that what troubled him most about Adam Horne was his lack of resemblance to most young men who came out to India. In general they were running away from gambling debts in England; from a wife, from scandal or crime. Although rumour had it that Horne had fled London after his fiancée had been murdered by a well-bred hooligan, Spencer had the distinct feeling that he had come to India not running from anything, but looking for something. But what? Who? Why?
    Horne troubled Spencer. He was a puzzle, an aristocrat by attitude if not birth, who lived by his own rules. Spencer’s one consolation was that young men like Adam Horne did not know what a relentless world they lived in, that they were innocent creatures compared to men like Spencer who had to plot, connive, juggle right and wrong to reach a profitable end. Men like Spencer used men like Adam Horne.

Chapter Eight
MONKEY-FACE
    Adam Horne strolled down the hill from Company House wishing there was some way to be a Bombay Marine without being connected to the East India Company. Involvement with them made him feel dishonest. He too often suspected them of dishonourable activities, sensing that his work helped unlikeable men to achieve ignoble ends.
    Horne held no illwill against commerce. His father was a banker, and the profits from business had fed and clothed him since childhood. But the size of the East India Company was now giving businessmen the power of kings, allowing them control over life and death. To Horne’s mind, this privilege was exceedingly dangerous.
    In 1600 Queen Elizabeth had granted a royal charter to a collection of English merchants who wanted to participate in the wealth being brought back to Europe from the Orient by Dutch and Portuguese trading companies. Quickly surpassing Holland and Portugal, England had also overtaken France’s East India Company, the Compagnie des Indes Orientales, turning a war with France from a struggle for trade into a battle for territory.
    One hundred and sixty-one years after its conception, England’s East India Company possessed more wealth, more power than most nations. In recent years Horne had seen how the Governors were beginning to increase the Company’s profits with the help of the sword, deposing Indian rulers who refused to grant them trading rights, planting company puppets on native thrones. Robert Clive,the former Governor of Bengal, had been the first man to hold a Company post as well as a commission in the Army. Retiring to London on his vast wealth from India, Clive was considered to be the richest man in the