The Snow Tiger / Night of Error. Desmond Bagley
much to leave, and I’ve no one to leave it to.’
Stenning shook his head. ‘Every man must make provision for the unknown future,’ he said in a lawyerly way. ‘Ben died after the seven-year period.’
‘Therefore the foundation doesn’t have to pay the tax.’
‘Precisely. But it was a near-run thing. For one thing, the government changed the law and Ben squeezed in just under the deadline. For another he died just two weeks after the seven years were up. In fact, he nearly didn’t make it at all. Do you remember him coming to see you just before you came to New Zealand?’
‘Yes. It was when he offered me the job in Hukahoronui.’
‘The effort nearly killed him,’ said Stenning. ‘The next day he took to his bed and never left it again.’
‘He sent me his stick,’ said Ballard. ‘I had a bad leg at the time. He said he wouldn’t need the stick again.’
‘He didn’t.’ Stenning looked at the sky contemplatively. ‘It was very important to Ben that he should see you at that time. The breaking of your leg was a minor disaster – you couldn’t go to see him, so the mountain had to go to Mahomet. It was so important to him that he put at risk a very large sum of money – and more beside.’
Ballard frowned. ‘I don’t see how it could have been important. All he did was to twist my arm into taking the job at Hukahoronui – and look how that’s turned out.’ His voice was bitter.
‘An avalanche wasn’t part of Ben’s plans – but it came in useful.’ Stenning laughed as he saw the bafflement on Ballard’s face. ‘You think I’m talking in riddles? Never mind; all will be made clear. Let us look at the charitable foundation. Ben gave it all his personal fortune except what he needed to live on until his death, which wasn’t much. Ben was not a man to flaunt prestige symbols; he had no Rolls Royce, for example. His needs were few and his life austere. But the foundation got a lot of money.’
‘I could see how it might.’
‘It does good work. The money or, rather, the interest on the money, supports several laboratories working mostly in the fields of mining safety and health. Very good and necessary work, indeed.’
‘My God!’ said Ballard in astonishment. ‘Do the trustees know how the Ballard Group works? Every safety regulation is normally bent, or broken if they think they can get away with it. That’s like giving with one hand and taking with the other.’
Stenning nodded. ‘That perturbed Ben, but there was nothing he could do about it at the time for reasons you shall see. Now let us take a look at the trustees. There are five.’ He ticked them off on his fingers. ‘There’s your uncle Edward, your cousin Frank, Lord Brockhurst, Sir William Bendell and myself. I am the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Ballard Foundation.’
‘I’m surprised that two of the family are trustees. From what Ben said the last time I saw him he had no great regard for them.’
‘Ben made them trustees for tactical reasons. You’ll see what I mean when I come to the nub. You’re right, of course, in your assessment of Ben’s attitude to the family. He had four sons, one of whom died here in New Zealand, and the other three turned out in a way he couldn’t stomach. He had no great regard for any of his grandchildren, either, except one.’ Stenning jabbed forward a thin forefinger. ‘You.’
‘He had funny ways of showing it,’ said Ballard wryly.
‘He’d seen how his sons had turned out and he knew that whatever else he was good at he was not a good father. So he saw to your education and left you strictly alone. He watched you, of course, and he liked what he saw. Now consider – what could Ben do a few years ago when he contemplated what was likely to happen to his personal fortune? He wouldn’t give it to his family whom he didn’t like, would he?’
‘Not on the face of it.’
‘No,’ said Stenning. ‘Anyway, as Ben saw it they already had enough. In all honesty, could he give it to you? How old were you then?’
‘Seven years ago? Twenty-eight.’
Stenning leaned back. ‘I rather think that when Ben and I first talked about setting this thing up you were twenty-six. Just a fledgling, Ian. Ben couldn’t see himself putting so much money and power – and money is power – into the hands of one so young. Besides, he wasn’t too sure of you. He thought you were immature for your years. He also thought your mother had something to do with that.’
‘I know. He was scathing about her at our last meeting.’
‘So he set up the Ballard Foundation. And he had to do two things: he had to make sure that he retained essential control – and he had to live for seven years. He did both. And he watched you like a hawk because he wanted to see how you turned out.’
Ballard grimaced. ‘Did I come up to expectations?’
‘He never found out,’ said Stenning. ‘He died before the Hukahoronui experiment was completed.’
Ballard stared at him. ‘Experiment! What experiment?’
‘You were being tested,’ said Stenning. ‘And this is how it went. You were now thirty-five; you were more than competent at any job you’d been given, and you knew how to handle men. But Ben had a feeling that you have a soft centre and he discovered a way to find out if this was indeed so.’ He paused. ‘I gather that you and the Peterson family have never got on too well together.’
‘An understatement,’ said Ballard.
Stenning’s face was firm. ‘Ben told me that the Petersons had walked all over you when you were a boy. He sent you to Hukahoronui to see if the same thing would happen.’
‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ Ballard was suddenly angry. ‘I knew he had a power complex, but who the hell did he think he was? God? And what the devil was it all for?’
‘You can’t be as naive as that,’ said Stenning. ‘Look at the composition of the Board of Trustees.’
‘All right; I’m looking. Two Ballards, yourself and two others. What about it?’
‘This about it. Old Brockhurst, Billy Bendell and I are all old friends of Ben. We had to have two of the family on the board so they wouldn’t smell a rat. If they had suspected what Ben was up to they’d have found a way to shove their oar in and wreck Ben’s plan. Any half-way criminal lawyer could have found a way of torpedoing the Foundation before Ben died. But for seven years the three of us have been playing the Ballards on a length of line so the boat wouldn’t be rocked. We’ve been playing along with the two Ballards on the board, only forcing our hand in things which didn’t matter too much to them. They think it’s going to continue in this way – but it’s not.’
‘I don’t see what this has got to do with me.’
Stenning said evenly, ‘Ben wanted you on the Board of Trustees.’
Ballard gaped at him. ‘So?’
‘So it’s arranged like this. The board is self-perpetuating. If a member retires there is a vote to elect his replacement and – this is important – the retiring member has a vote. Brockhurst is nearly eighty and has only held on to please Ben. When he retires you’ll have his vote, you’ll have Billy Bendell’s vote, and you’ll have my vote – and that’s a majority and there’s nothing the Ballards can do about it.’
Ballard was silent for a long time. Presently he said, ‘This is all very well, but I’m not an administrator, at least, not of the trustee kind. I suppose there’d be an honorarium, but I have a living to earn. You’re offering me a job for a retired business man. I don’t want to run a charitable fund, no matter how big.’
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