The Affair of the Avalanche Bicycle and Tyre, Co., Ltd.

The Affair of the 'Avalanche Bicycle and Tyre, Co., Ltd.'
by Arthur Morrison
Copyright, 1897, by Arthur Morrison, in the United States of America.
THE AFFAIR OF THE "AVALANCHE BICYCLE & TYRE CO.,
LTD."
CYCLE companies were in the market everywhere. Immense fortunes
were being made in a few days and sometimes little fortunes were
being lost to build them up. Mining shares were dull for a season, and
any company with the word "cycle" or "tyre" in its title was certain to
attract capital, no matter what its prospects were like in the eyes of the
expert. All the old private cycle companies suddenly were offered to
the public, and their proprietors, already rich men, built themselves
houses on the Riviera, bought yachts, ran racehorses, and left business
for ever. Sometimes the shareholders got their money's-worth,
sometimes more, sometimes less -- sometimes they got nothing but
total loss; but still the game went on. One could never open a
newspaper without finding, displayed at large, the prospectus of yet
another cycle company with capital expressed in six figures at least,
often in seven. Solemn old dailies, into whose editorial heads no new
thing ever found its way till years after it had been forgotten elsewhere,
suddenly exhibited the scandalous phenomenon of "broken columns" in
their advertising sections, and the universal prospectuses stretched
outrageously across half or even all the page -- a thing to cause
apoplexy in the bodily system of any self-respecting manager of the old
school.
In the midst of this excitement it chanced that the firm of Dorrington &
Hicks were engaged upon an investigation for the famous and
long-established "Indestructible Bicycle & Tricycle Manufacturing
Company," of London and Coventry. The matter was not one of
sufficient intricacy or difficulty to engage Dorrington's personal

attention, and it was given to an assistant. There was some doubt as to
the validity of a certain patent having reference to a particular method
of tightening the spokes and truing the wheels of a tricycle, and
Dorrington's assistant had to make inquiries (without attracting
attention to the matter) as to whether or not there existed any evidence,
either documentary or in the memory of veterans, of the use of this
method, or anything like it, before the year 1885. The assistant
completed his inquiries and made his report to Dorrington. Now I think
I have said that, from every evidence I have seen, the chief matter of
Dorrington's solicitude was his own interest, and just at this time he had
heard, as had others, much of the money being made in cycle
companies. Also, like others, he had conceived a great desire to get the
confidential advice of somebody "in the know" -- advice which might
lead him into the "good thing" desired by all the greedy who flutter
about at the outside edge of the stock and share market. For this reason
Dorrington determined to make this small matter of the wheel patent an
affair of personal report. He was a man of infinite resource, plausibility
and good-companionship, and there was money going in the cycle trade.
Why then should he lose an opportunity of making himself pleasant, in
the inner groves of that trade, and catch whatever might come his way
-- information, syndicate shares, directorships, anything? So that
Dorrington made himself master of his assistant's information, and
proceeded to the head office of the "Indestructible" company on
Holborn Viaduct, resolved to become the entertaining acquaintance of
the managing director.
On his way his attention was attracted by a very elaborately fitted cycle
shop which his recollection told him was new. "The Avalanche Bicycle
& Tyre Company" was the legend gilt above the great plate-glass
window, and in the window itself stood many brilliantly enamelled and
plated bicycles, each labelled on the frame with the flaming red and
gold transfer of the firm; and in the midst of all was another bicycle
covered with dried mud, of which, however, sufficient had been
carefully cleared away to expose a similar glaring transfer to those that
decorated the rest -- with a placard announcing that on this particular
machine somebody had ridden some incredible distance on bad roads in
very little more than no time at all. A crowd stood about the window;

and gaped respectfully at the placard, the bicycles, the transfers and the
mud, though they paid little attention to certain piles of folded white
papers, endorsed in bold letters with the name of the company, with the
suffix "limited" and the word "prospectus" in bloated black letter below.
These, however, Dorrington observed at once, for he had himself that
morning, in common with several thousand other people, received one
by post. Also half a page of his morning paper had been filled with a
copy of that same prospectus,