Читать книгу The Battle of Basinghall Street - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Servants were waiting in the hall, the number and livery of whom seemed somehow reminiscent of musical comedy. One, with perfect gravity, handed the departing visitor his overcoat, another his hat, a third his stick and gloves.

"Taxicab or car, sir?" a superior person in plain evening clothes enquired from the background.

Sandbrook shook his head.

"I think I'll walk, thanks," he decided.

The door was closed behind him. He lingered upon the pavement for a few moments, deliberating. Before he had made up his mind upon the vital subject of his destination, the door reopened and Miss Frances Moore came out. She, too, hesitated. He raised his hat and approached her.

"You appear to be like myself—in a state of indecision," he remarked. "Can I help you make up your mind?"

"My dilemma is too simple a one," she laughed. "I am going home to my rooms and I was wondering whether I ought not to walk a short distance before taking a taxi."

"I can help you," he declared. "A little exercise at this time of the evening is the best thing in the world. You will permit me to accompany you part of the way?"

"How do you know that I haven't someone waiting for me?" she asked, as they fell into step.

"It is a disconcerting suggestion," he sighed. "At the same time, I don't believe in it."

"Why not?"

"Because I imagine you to be a young lady of precise habits. You could not have told beforehand at what hour you would be able to leave that mausoleum of luxury, and I'm quite sure that you would never keep anyone waiting."

"People have been content to wait for me before now," she murmured.

"At the slightest sign of an intervener of whose appearance I approve," he promised, "I will fade into a taxicab. Before that time comes, however, let me thank you for getting me that interview."

"Did you do what you wanted to?" she asked.

"I saw what manner of men they were," he replied, "and I confirmed certain impressions I had about them. I wish I needed a publicity secretary, Miss Moore! I should love to offer you the post."

"Why?"

"Because you have created a halo of romance in an impossible place. After reading some of your articles and interviews, I looked upon the directors of Woolito, Limited, as gods upon the earth."

"I'm sorry if you're disappointed. Anyhow, I'm not thinking of making a change. I'm perfectly contented where I am."

"I can't believe it. I have nothing against them personally, but I cannot imagine you as being content to work for such a gang of money-grabbers."

"If a business man to-day is not a money-grabber," she replied, "he'd better get out of business—sit in the back yard and write poetry or something of that sort. The directors of the Woolito Company are very shrewd business men. Everyone says that it is going to be one of the richest companies in the world. There is not a single competitor who will be able to stand up against them."

"Yes, I suppose they are shrewd," he admitted. "It is a kindly adjective to apply to them, though. Tell me again the name of the man on Lord Marsom's right—the little, wizened-up fellow with grey hair, puckered face and eyes like a cat."

"You are not in a flattering mood this evening," she laughed. "That is Sir Sigismund Lunt, the great engineer. He has just invented the most wonderful textile machine in the world."

"Surely I have read about it in the papers somewhere lately," he reflected.

"I should think it more than likely," she observed drily. "A model of the machine itself is on exhibition every day to privileged visitors up at Tottenham, together with the most interesting model of the new factory Woolito's are building."

"I must run up and see it," Sandbrook decided. "However wonderful I may find it, though, I sha'n't change my idea about its inventor. A most unpleasant old gentleman: chuckled at my poor old dad's old-fashioned ideas. Then there was another bilious-looking knight who sat on Lord Marsom's left—a man with yellow teeth and a cadaverous expression."

"That was Sir Alfred Honeyman. He is supposed to be one of the cleverest financiers in the City."

"He may be," Sandbrook agreed, "but someone ought to give him the address of a decent shirt-maker. I could see his undervest every time he leaned forward. Most upsetting for his neighbour at a dinner table, I should think."

"Please talk sensibly," she begged. "What did you want to see them all for this evening, and are you really going to take your father's place on the board?"

"Something has been said about it. That's why I was so keen to see them all together and ask a few questions. My father resigned from the board, you know, just before he died."

"I'm afraid he was not exactly what you would call a business man, was he?" she ventured.

"Finicky," Sandbrook acknowledged. "Straight-laced, beyond a doubt. I don't suppose there was ever anything seriously wrong in the matters he took exception to but I felt that I ought to satisfy myself."

"If you belong to the same school of thought as your father, you should keep away from the City altogether," she advised him.

"I don't," he assured her. "All the same, I didn't want to get mixed up with a pack of brigands."

She frowned at him severely. They were passing an electric standard and, glancing towards her, Sandbrook was more than ever aware that she was a very attractive person. She walked, too, with a delightfully easy movement—a free swing from the hips which suggested the gymnasium.

"Englishmen of your position in life," she said, "know nothing whatever about business or business methods. It is very wrong of you to criticise."

"I am properly snubbed. But tell me—how much do you know of the inner working of Woolito, Limited?"

"Nothing at all. Don't you understand, I am publicity secretary? I see that Woolito is talked about in all the newspapers, and where I give advertisements, I expect mention of it in the social gossip and that sort of thing. That's what I have to look after."

"Do you wear any of the stuff yourself?"

"That has nothing to do with it," she told him. "We all made fun of artificial silk when it came out, but it's holding its own, all right. No one believed even then that there could be a substitute for wool, but you see there is."

"All the same, I wish you didn't work for them," he said doggedly.

"What difference does it make to you where I work?"

He hesitated and glanced towards her. For some reason or other, her attitude seemed to him to have become faintly belligerent.

"Have you any great friends on the board?"

"None at all. My father knew Lord Marsom when he was in New York."

"You are American, then?"

"How clever of you! Have I lost as much of my accent as all that?"

"There was something, of course," he admitted, "but it might have been Canadian. I am glad you're American. You like people to be plain-spoken, don't you?"

"Up to a certain point."

He slackened his pace. They were outside his club in Piccadilly.

"I never saw one of them before," he confided, leaning towards her, "but every one of those seven men to whom Lord Marsom introduced me to-night is a wrong 'un. Some day they will be found out. You will have all you can do as publicity secretary to defend them one by one. Woolito may be all right. The men who are making it aren't up to much. However, as you have pointed out, it doesn't matter, if the money rolls in. Good-bye; I'm going in here."

"You are," she declared, with an angry little flash in her eyes, "one of the most prejudiced Englishmen I ever knew. You are exactly what I was told. You are all alike."

He lingered with his hat in his hand.

"What night will you dine with me to discover how shockingly you are mistaken?" he invited.

"I do not dine out," she replied coldly.

"It seems to me," he complained, "that your manner lacks cordiality. You are in a strange country and I am trying to justify our reputation for hospitality."

"It is not a strange country. I have been here for four years."

"And you have not found out these Woolito people yet?"

"I have only been with them for two years and there is nothing about them to find out—nothing bad, that is to say. They are shrewd, that's all. You have to fight the other man in business, or else go under yourself. Americans have always recognised the fact and that's why they are better business people than you English."

"Now I know," he murmured ruefully.

"Now you know," she assented. "Good night."

The old man in the front room of a house on the far outskirts of Finsbury seemed absolutely unconscious that the door had been opened, that anyone else was in the room. He was seated before a complicated piece of wooden machinery, the large wheel of which he worked with his feet, and by his side was a basket filled with wool, one end of which was attached to the wheel. At intervals of a few yards were several exactly similar looms and their respective stools. Two things impressed themselves upon the visitor who had just entered the room. The first was that, for all its seeming complexity, the machine did nothing but wind up the wool, the second that the wool was of brilliant scarlet colour.

"Good evening," the caller said.

"Whoever you are, you must wait," the man on the stool snapped. "Can't you see—this is the most critical point of the whole thing? Stand back out of the light and be quiet."

The speaker had not once turned his head. He was untidily dressed, without coat or waistcoat, and the whole of the energy of his brain and shrivelled muscles seemed to be devoted to pedalling his machine and keeping the wool upon the huge reel. In course of time, the whole of it was through. The basket was empty. He leaned back in his chair with a sigh of relief and, taking up a hand bell by his side, rang it. The woman who had admitted the caller answered the summons.

"Take off the reel, James," the old man directed. "Bring another basketful of yarn."

The woman unfastened the reel with practised fingers, took up the basket and departed. She accepted the whole thing as a matter of course. The man turned upon his stool towards the waiting figure.

"I am very busy," he said peevishly. "Couldn't they attend to you in the office?"

"I only deal with principals," was the important reply. "They tell me that you are the only one who really understands the great Woolito process. I wanted to see it."

The old man appeared pleased.

"Well, well," he approved, "that's right, lad. If you are a buyer, though, you will be disappointed. I can't supply you. I have orders for ten years ahead."

"That's too bad," the visitor regretted. "I've come quite a long way to have a chat with you."

"No good, my friend. No new customers for us. We have two thousand looms running and eighteen thousand men at work. I could send my manager to the telephone there and book orders for twenty years. All my clever lad, too!"

"I should like to hear about him."

"He doesn't often come to the mills," the old man explained. "He's a member of parliament! He goes about here and there—hobnobs with all the great people. Why not? His brain did it."

"What's his name?" the shadowy person in the background asked.

"That's a foolish question," was the irritable response. "Everyone in England knows his name. Everyone knows Leonard Blunt. Did you see those hampers of wool that just went out?"

"Yes."

"Did you notice the colour of it?"

"I did, indeed. The most brilliant scarlet I ever saw in my life."

The old man grinned. His sunken eyes flashed with triumph.

"That's my Len," he declared. "That's him. I never held with schooling, but it was his chemistry that taught him that. There were other folks that thought they could make wool from imitation yarn—let 'em try. Grey and greasy when they've done with it. Look at ours—scarlet, blue, any colour you like in the world. That's my Len. That's why we employ eighteen thousand hands. That's why the roar of our machinery shakes the countryside day and night. I will tell you something, Mister. I'll tell you something quaint."

"I'm listening."

"There was another firm thought it could make artificial wool," the old man chuckled. "They started like we are now. They went on, and big people they became, and what are they now? I'll tell you, Mister. I can't do business with you. You've got a decent sort of face, but no new customers for us—not for many a year. But I'll tell you something. Not far from here there's an old man sitting in a single room, working an old hand machine, gone crazy because my Len found out the secret and he didn't; and he works all day and he thinks he is turning out Woolito! He fills his basket with nasty, dirty grey stuff and day by day and week by week it comes out always the same colour and they throw it on the ash heap. What do you think of that, Mister?"

The old man rocked with laughter so that he nearly fell from his seat. The door was opened and the woman reëntered. She laid another basket of wool, this time a bright green, upon the floor. She fastened the end of it to the reel. The tenant of the room drew a long breath.

"You'll excuse me now, sir," he begged. "I have a hundred looms in this place to look after and the bell's gone. We're off."

He bent over his task. Again his feet were on the treadles—again his fingers were guiding the wool. The woman led the visitor away.

"You can't do any more good," she said. "That's him day by day. He thinks he's working in the greatest factory of the world and you can't get it out of his head, but he don't do nobody any harm and he's got enough to live on, and there you are."

The intruder slipped a pound note into her hand and stepped out into the dirty obscure side street. Inside the room which he had left, the old man, his lips parted with eagerness, the lines of his worn flinty face deepened with earnestness, moved his feet upon the treadles and guided the wool with bony, shaking fingers.