Читать книгу The Air Trust - George Allan England - Страница 14

On the eleventh day after this interview between the two men who, between them, practically held the whole world in their grasp, Herzog telephoned up from Oakwood Heights and took the liberty of informing Flint that his experiments had reached a point of such success that he prayed Flint would condescend to visit the laboratories in person.

Flint, after some reflection, decided he would so condescend; and forthwith ordered his limousine from his private garage on William Street. Thereafter he called Waldron on the 'phone, at his Fifth Avenue address.

"Mr. Waldron is not up, yet, sir," a carefully-modulated voice answered over the wire. "Any message I can give him, sir?"

"Oh, hello! That you, Edwards?" Flint demanded, recognizing the suave tones of his partner's valet.

"Yes, sir."

"All right. Tell Waldron I'll call for him in half an hour with the limousine. And mind, now, I want him to be up and dressed! We're going down to Staten Island. Got that?"

"Yes, sir. Any other message, sir?"

"No. But be sure you get him up, for me! Good-bye!"

Thirty minutes later, Flint's chauffeur opened the door of the big limousine, in front of the huge Renaissance pile that Waldron's millions had raised on land which had cost him more than as though he had covered it with double eagles; and Flint himself ascended the steps of Pentelican marble. The limousine, its varnish and silver-plate flashing in the bright spring sun, stood by the curb, purring softly to itself with all six cylinders, a thing of matchless beauty and rare cost. The chauffeur, on the driver's seat, did not even bother to shut off the gas, but let the engine run, regardless. To have stopped it would have meant some trifling exertion, in starting again; and since Flint never considered such details as a few gallons of gasoline, why should he care? Lighting a Turkish cigarette, this aristocrat of labor lolled on the padded leather and indifferently—with more of contempt than of interest—regarded a swarm of iron-workers, masons and laborers at work on a new building across the avenue.

Flint, meanwhile, had entered the great mansion, its bronze doors—ravished from the Palazzo Guelfo at Venice—having swung inward to admit him, with noiseless majesty. Ignoring the doorman, he addressed himself to Edwards, who stood in the spacious, mahogany-panelled hall, washing both hands with imaginary soap.

"Waldron up, yet, Edwards?"

"No, sir. He—er—I have been unable—"

"The devil! Where is he?"

"In his apartments, sir."

"Take me up!"

"He said, sir," ventured Edwards, in his smoothest voice. "He said—"

"I don't give a damn what he said! Take me up, at once!"

"Yes, sir. Immediately, sir!" And he gestured suavely toward the elevator.

Flint strode down the hall, indifferent to the Kirmanshah rugs, the rare mosaic floor and stained-glass windows, the Parian fountain and the Azeglio tapestries that hung suspended up along the stairway—all old stories to him and as commonplace as rickety odds and ends of furniture might be to any toiler "cribbed, cabin'd and confined" in fetid East Side tenement or squalid room on Hester Street.

The elevator boy bowed before his presence. Edwards hesitated to enter the private elevator, with this world-master; but Flint beckoned him to come along. And so, borne aloft by the smooth force of the electric motor, they presently reached the upper floor where "Tiger" Waldron laired in stately splendor, like the nabob that he was.

Without ceremony, Flint pushed forward into the bed-chamber of the mighty one—a chamber richly finished in panels of the rare sea-grape tree, brought from Pacific isles at great cost of money and some expenditure of human lives; but this latter item was, of course, beneath consideration.

By the softened light which entered through rich curtains, one saw the famous frieze of De Lussac, that banded the apartment, over the panelling—the frieze of Bacchantes, naked and unashamed, revelling with Satyrs in an abandon that bespoke the age when the world was young. Their voluptuous forms entwined with clustering grapes and leaves, they poured tipsy libations of red wine from golden chalices; while old Silenus, god of drink, astride a donkey, applauded with maudlin joy.

Flint, however, had no eyes for this scene which would have gladdened a voluptuary's heart—and which, for that reason was dear to Waldron—but walked toward the huge, four-posted bed where Wally himself, now rather paler than usual, with bloodshot eyes, was lying. This bed, despite the fact that it had been transported all the way from Tours, France, and that it once had belonged to an archbishop, had only too often witnessed its owner's insomnia.

"Hm! You're a devil of a man to keep an appointment, aren't you?" Flint sneered at the master of the house. "Eleven o'clock, and not up, yet!"

"Pardon me for remarking, my dear Flint," replied Waldron, stretching himself between the silken sheets and reaching for a cigarette, "that the appointment was not of my making. Also that I was up, last night—this morning, rather—till three-thirty. And in the next place, that scoundrel Hazeltine, trimmed me out of eighty-six thousand in four hours—"

"Roulette again, you idiot?" demanded Flint.

"And in conclusion," said Wally, "that the bigness of my head and the brown taste in my mouth are such as no 'soda and sermons, the morning after' can possibly alleviate. So you understand my dalliance.

"Damn those workmen!" he exclaimed, with sudden irritation, as a louder chattering of pneumatic riveters from the new building all at once clattered in at the window. "A free country, eh? And men are permitted to make that kind of a racket when a fellow wants to sleep! By God, if I—"

"Drop that, Wally, and get up!" commanded Flint. "There's no time for this kind of thing today. Herzog has just informed me his experiments have brought results. We're going down to Oakwood Heights to sea a few things for ourselves. And the quicker you get dressed and in your right mind, the better. Come along, I tell you!"

"Still chasing sunbeams from cucumbers, eh?" drawled the magnate, inhaling cigarette smoke and blowing a thin cloud toward the wanton Bacchantes. He affected indifference, but his dull eyes brightened a trifle in his wan face, deep-lined by the savage dissipations of the previous night. "And you insist on dragging me out on the same fatuous errand?"

"Don't be an ass!" snapped the Billionaire. "Get up and come along. The sooner we have this thing under way, the better."

"All right, anything to oblige," conceded Waldron, inwardly stirred by an interest he took good care not to divulge in word or look. "Give me just time for a cold plunge, a few minutes with my masseur and my barber, a bite to eat and—"

Flint laid hold on his partner and shook him roughly.

"Move, you sluggard!" he commanded. And Tiger Waldron obeyed.

Forty-five minutes later, the two financiers were speeding down the asphalt of the avenue at a good round clip. Flint's gleaming car formed one unit of the never-ending procession of motors which, day and night, year in and year out, spin unceasingly along the great, hard, splendid, cruel thoroughfare.

"I tell you," Flint was asserting as they swung into Broadway, at Twenty-third Street, and headed for South Ferry, "I tell you, Wally, the thing is growing vaster and more potent every moment. The longer I look at it, the huger its possibilities loom up! With air under our control, as a source of manufacturing alone, we can pull down perfectly inconceivable fortunes. We shan't have to send anywhere for our raw material. It will come to us; it's everywhere. No cost for transportation, to begin with.

"With oxygen, nitrogen and liquid air as products, think of the possibilities, will you? Not an ice-plant in the country could compete with us, in the refrigerating line. With liquid air, we could sweep that market clean. By installing it on our fruit cars and boats, and our beef cars, the saving effected in many ways would run to millions. The sale of nitrogen, for fertilizer, would net us billions. And, above all, the control of the world's air supply, for breathing, would make us the absolute, undisputed masters of mankind!

"We'd have the world by the windpipe. Its very life-breath would be at our disposal. Ha! What about revolution, then? What about popular discontent, and stiff-necked legislators, and cranky editors? What about commercial and financial rivals? What about these damned Socialists, with their brass-lunged bazoo, howling about monopoly and capitalism and all the rest of it? Eh, what? Just one squeeze," here Flint closed his corded, veinous fingers, "just one tightening of the fist, and—all over! We win, hands down!"

"Like shutting the wind off from a runaway horse, eh?" suggested Waldron, squinting at his cigar as though to hide the involuntary gleam of light that sparkled in his narrow-set eyes.

"Precisely!" assented Flint, smiling his gold-toothed smile. "The wildest bolter has got to stop, or fall dead, once you close his nostrils. That's what we'll do to the world, Wally. We'll get it by the throat—and there you are!"

"Yes, there we are," repeated Waldron, "but—"

"But what, now?"

Waldron did not answer, for a moment, but squinted up at the tall buildings, temples of Mammon and of Greed, filled from pave to cornice with toiling, sweated hordes of men and women, all laboring for Capitalism; many of them, directly or indirectly, for him. Then, as the limousine slowed at Spring Street, to let a cross-town car pass—a car whose earnings he and Flint both shared, just as they shared those of every surface and subway and "L" car in the vast metropolis—he said:

"Have you weighed the consequences carefully, Flint? Quite carefully? This thing of cornering all the oxygen is a pretty big proposition. Do you think you really ought to undertake it?"

"Why not?"

"Have you considered the frightful suffering and loss of life it might entail? Almost certainly would entail? Are you quite sure you want to take the world by the throat and—and choke it? For money?"

"No, not for money, Waldron. We're both staggering under money, as it is. But power! Ah, that's different!"

"I know," admitted Waldron. "But ought we—you—to attempt this, even for the sake of universal power? Your plan contemplates a monopoly such that everybody who refused or was unable to buy your product would, at best, have to get along with vitiated air, and at worst would have to stifle. Do you really think we ought to undertake this?"

Keenly he eyed Flint, as he thus sounded the elder man's inhuman determination. Flint, fathoming nothing of his purpose, retorted with some heat:

"Ha! Getting punctilious, all at once, are you? Talk ethics, eh? Where were your scruples, a year ago, when people were paying 25 cents a loaf for bread, because of that big wheat pool you put through? How about the oil you've just lately helped me boost by a 20 per cent. increase? And when the papers—though mostly those infernal Socialist or Anarchist papers, or whatever they were—shouted that old men and women were freezing in attics, last winter, what then? Did you vote to arbitrate the D.K. coal strike? Not by a jugful! You stood shoulder to shoulder with me, then, Wally, while now—!"

"It's a bit different, now," interposed "Tiger," with an evil smile, still leading his partner along. "Since then I've had the—ah—the extreme happiness to become engaged to your daughter, Catherine. New thoughts have entered my mind. I've experienced a—a—"

"You quitter!" burst out Flint. "No, by God! you aren't going to put this thing over on me. I'll have no quitter for my son-in-law! Wally, I'm astonished at you. Astonished and disappointed. You're not yourself, this morning. That eighty-six thousand you dropped last night, has shaken your heart. Come, come, pull together! Where's your nerve, man? Where's your nerve?"

Waldron answered nothing. In silence the partners watched the press of traffic, each busy with his own thoughts, Waldron waiting for Flint to reopen fire on him, and the Billionaire decided to say no more till his associate should make some move. Thus the limousine reached the Staten Island ferry, that glorious monument of municipal ownership wrecked by Tammany grafting. In silence they smoked while the car rolled down the incline and out onto the huge ferry boat. Then, as the crowded craft got under way, a minute later, both men left the car and strolled to the rail to watch the glittering sparkle of the sunlight on the harbor; the teeming commerce of the port; the creeping liners and busy tugs; the towering figure of Liberty, her flameless torch held far aloft in mockery.

Suddenly Waldron spoke.

"You can't do it, I tell you!" said he, waving an eloquent hand toward the sky. "It's too big, the air is, as I said before. Too damned big! Own coal and copper, if you will, and steel and ships, here; own those buildings back there," with a gesture at the frowning line of skyscrapers buttressing Manhattan, "but don't buck the impossible! And incidentally, Flint, don't misunderstand me, either. When I asked you if we ought to try it, I merely meant, would it be safe? The world, Flint, is a dangerous toy to play with, too hard. The people are perilous baubles, if you step on their corns a bit too often or too heavily. Every Caesar has a Brutus waiting for him somewhere, with a club.

"Once let the unwashed get an idea into their low brows, and you can't tell where it may lead them. Even a rat fights, in its last corner. These human rats of ours have been getting a bit nasty of late. True, they swallowed the Limited Franchise Bill, three years ago, with only a little futile protest, so that now we've got them politically hamstrung. True, there's the Dick Military Bill, recently enlarged and perfected, so they can't move a hand without falling into treason and court-martial. True again, they've stood for the Censorship and the National Mounted Police—the Grays—all in the last year. But how much more will they stand, eh? You close your hand on their windpipes, and by God! something may happen even yet, after all!"

Flint snapped his fingers with contempt.

"Machine guns!" was all he said.

"Yes, of course," answered Waldron. "But there may be life in the old beast yet. They may yet kick the apple cart over—and us with it. You never can tell. And those infernal Socialists, always at it, night and day, never letting up, flinging firebrands into the powder magazine! Sometime there's going to be one hell of a bang, Flint! And when it comes, suave qui peut! So go slow, old man—go damned slow, that's all I've got to say!"

"On the contrary," said Flint, blinking in the golden spring sunshine as he peered out over the swashing brine at a raucous knot of gulls, "on the contrary, Wally, I'm going to push it as fast as the Lord will let me. You can come in, or not, as you see fit—but remember this, no quitter ever gets a daughter of mine! And another thing; we're in the year 1921, now, not 1910 or 1915. Developments, political and otherwise, have moved swiftly, these few years past. Then, there might have been trouble. To-day, there can't be. We've got things cinched too tight for that!

"Ten years ago, they might have had our blood, the people might, or given us a hemp-tea party in Wall Street. today, all's safe. Come, be a man and grip your courage! We can put the initial stages through in absolute secrecy—and then, once we get our clutch on the world's breath, what have we to fear?"

"Go slow, Flint!"

"Nonsense! Oxygen is life itself. There's no substitute. Vitiate the air by removing even 10 per cent. of it, and the world will lick our boots for a chance to breathe! Everybody's got to have oxygen, all the way from kings and emperors down to the toiling cattle, the Henry Dubbs, as I believe they're commonly called in vulgar speech. Shut off the air, and 'the captains and the kings' will run to heel like the rabble itself. Run to heel, and pay for the privilege of doing it! We've got the universities, press, churches, laws, judges, army and navy and everything already in our hands. We'll be secure enough, no fear!"

"Shhhhh!" And Waldron nudged the Billionaire with his elbow.

In his excitement, Flint had permitted his voice to rise, a little. Not far from him, leaning on the rail, a stockily built young fellow in overalls, a cap pulled down firmly over his well-shaped head, was apparently watching the gulls and the passing boats, with eyes no less blue than the bay itself; eyes no less glinting than the sunlight on the waves. He seemed to be paying no heed to anything but what lay before him. But "Tiger" Waldron, possessed of something of the instinct of the beast whose name he bore, subconsciously sensed a peril in his nearness. The man's ear—if unusually quick—might, just might possibly have caught a word or two meant for no interloper. And at that thought, Waldron once more nudged his partner.

"Shhh!" he repeated, "Enough. We can finish this, in the limousine."

Flint looked at him a moment, in silence, then nodded.

"Right you are," said he. And both men climbed back into the closed car.

"You never can tell what ears are primed for news," said Waldron. "Better take no chances."

"Before long, we can throw away all subterfuge," the Billionaire replied as he shut the door. "But for now, well, you're correct. Once our grasp tightens on the windpipe of the world, we're safe. From our office in Wall Street you and I can play the keys of the world-machine as an organist would finger his instrument. But there must be no leak; no publicity; no suspicion aroused. We'll play our music pianissimo, Wally, with rare accompaniments to the tune of 'great public utility, benefit to the public health,' and all that—the same old game, only on a vastly larger scale.

"Every modern composer in the field of Big Business knows that score and has played it many times. We will play it on a monstrous pipe organ, with the world's lungs for bellows and the world's breath to vibrate our reeds—and all paying tribute, night and day, year after year, all over the world, Wally, all over the world!