Overview

With considerable restraint, the financial columns report that directors of the Davenport Construction company Ltd., have had a "difference of opinion." In fact, the whole career of managing director Anthony Wilcox faces ruin, and the strategic intrigues among the factions produce a tense atmosphere more usually associated with crime and detection. Someone has been selling secrets of the company's quotations, enabling a rival concern consistently to undercut them by narrow margins. It is common knowledge that Wilcox is a close personal friend of Gordon Robinson, head of their successful rivals, and John Freyling, Wilcox's ruthlessly ambitious deputy, uses the situation to remove Wilcox from office. Things are at their blackest for the former managing director when the board discovers that he has tied up all his personal capital with one of their small, failing competitors, Edward Pringle, Ltd., after selling his Davenport shares. However, with astute use of the few powers remaining to him, Wilcox forces Freyling and his supporters into a more and more difficult situation until, with a master stroke of bluff, he tricks an admission from the guilty party, completely vindicating his own behaviour and regaining the full confidence of his fellow directors. A smash success in London.