The Firm of Girdlestone

The Firm of Girdlestone is a novel written by Arthur Conan Doyle and originally published in 1890.

John and Ezra Girdlestone are a father and son who run a small London trading company with interests on the coast of Africa. They have several sailing ships, but they are terribly poorly maintained. John is very religious and this clashes head-on with his son, whom he considers a cynic.

A series of bad decisions made by the father make the company very bad financially and on the verge of bankruptcy. Both use stratagems to save the company such as making supposedly charitable donations with the sole purpose of winning the favor of parliament or lying about the discovery of a large diamond mine with the sole purpose of bringing down the price so that they can buy them cheaper and then resell them.

They carry out their plan and buy a huge amount of diamonds, but to their regret, a new mine is actually discovered, in South Africa, and the prices fall even more, which leaves them in a very complicated situation...

The book The Firm of Girdlestone has been adapted for television in the 1958 BBC series with the same name.

The approach to the offices of Girdlestone and Co. was not a very dignified one, nor would the uninitiated who traversed it form any conception of the commercial prosperity of the firm in question. Close to the corner of a broad and busy street, within a couple of hundred yards of Fenchurch Street Station, a narrow doorway opens into a long whitewashed passage. On one side of this is a brass plate with the inscription "Girdlestone and Co., African Merchants," and above it a curious hieroglyphic supposed to represent a human hand in the act of pointing.