Читать книгу The Spider's Web - Reginald Wright Kauffman - Страница 8

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On a morning of that same April in a large rear room on the twentieth floor of a Wall Street skyscraper, three men were seated around a large mahogany table. They were talking business. Each man had his own offices and his own businesses, but they frequently and quietly met in this, the inner office of one, because most of the businesses of each were closely connected, at several points, with the business interests of all.

There was nothing unusual about the outward appearance of the public actions of this trio; they were apparently but three units of the legion that makes this portion of New York a city by day and a desert by night. Each had come downtown in his own motor that morning, defying speed laws and traffic regulations, just as scores of his business neighbors had done. Each had descended at his own offices, passed through a half-dozen doors guarded by six bowing attendants, and proceeded to his own desk in his own private room, precisely as a small army of other business men were doing at the same time within a radius of half a mile. Each looked like the rest of that army. All three were men of about the average in height, not noticeably either above or below it, and inclined to bulkiness. They had pale faces and close mouths and quiet eyes, which looked out upon the world from under bushy brows with glances that gave the lie to the lethargic indications of the little pouches of loose skin below their lower lids. Each man wore a flower in the lapel of his dark coat; one wore a white waistcoat; the cropped mustache of one was black; that of another was touched with gray; the man at the head of the table was clean-shaven.

The man at the head of the table was, for the most of the time, even less remarkable than his companions. He was somewhat shorter and heavier; his abdomen swelled so that his shoulders were somewhat farther from the table than were those of his associates; his bushy eyebrows were somewhat more bushy; his pale face somewhat paler; his calm eyes somewhat sharper, yet more calm;—and his lips, in addition to closing tightly, were so heavy that the compression of the mouth must have resulted from a habit acquired only by a strong and long effort of the will. He sat with his great hands flat upon the surface of the table, his thick fingers extended, his elbows raised at right angles to his torso and pointing ceilingward. His chest heaved visibly, but his breathing was inaudible. His eyes were everywhere. He spoke rarely, but when he did speak it was as if he darted over the table, seized something, and returned: he was startlingly brief and sudden, and was instantly back again in his quiet watchfulness, apparently heavy, unruffled, slow.

He had come to work that morning with his usual promptness—the moment of his coming never changed—and in his usual temper. He had threaded the maze of corridors with a springing step. In the mahogany-paneled room with its heavy table and arm-chairs, and its one decoration, a rare engraving of George Washington, hung between the two windows that gave the place its only chance for sunlight, he found on his desk, in a corner, a clean blotter, a fresh pen, a small pad of cheap paper for memoranda, and nothing else. He pressed one of a row of worn buttons in the side of the desk. He was ringing for his private secretary.

The secretary, who patently tried to look as much like his master as possible, and succeeded, entered, a sheaf of open letters in his hand, and noiselessly closed the door behind him.

"Good-morning," said his master. His voice was quite low; it was thin and cool, but his words fell quickly.

"Good-morning," said the secretary.

"What's in the mail?"

"Not much, sir. Only about twenty things that need your personal attention."

"About twenty!" The master's words seemed to leap from him and assault the secretary, but his face was set like a plaster-cast of calm and his tone was even. "Do you mean nineteen or twenty-one?"

The secretary was too used to this manner of speech to be alarmed by it.

"Twenty-two," he said. He handed the letters to his master.

That one ran them over with a quick hand and a quicker eye. In terse, sharp sentences, he directed his secretary how to reply to them, the latter taking rapid stenographic notes of the commands.

"You have turned the begging communications over to Simpson to investigate?" the employer inquired.

"Yes, sir."

"And the requests for contributions?"

"Yes, sir. There was one for a new hospital at Akron. The rubber people have given five thousand, and——"

"Tell Simpson to write that I'll give ten thousand if the town raises ten thousand more."

"Very well, sir."

"Has Mr. Brinley telephoned from Washington?"

"Yes, sir. He says he is to take breakfast at the White House to-morrow."

"What's that? He was told to arrange it for to-day."

"He was; but he said he'd got word from the——"

"Never mind. To-morrow will do, if he only keeps his word this time. Wire him: 'Right; but positively no more postponements.' Use the code signature and send from somewhere uptown,—Anything from Albany?"

"Yes. Senator Scudder says to tell you that bill will be reported to-day and rushed through before evening."

"Have Conover go up to the Astor and get Scudder on the 'phone and say that the bill must be passed before noon recess. The Governor will sign it immediately."

"Yes, sir."

"And Conover is not to mention names."

"Of course not, sir."

"Anything else?"

"No—except somebody has been trying to get you on the long-distance wire from Hartford."

"That's Sparks.—Run over to the corner pay-station and call up the legislative building at Hartford. Get Sparks on the 'phone. Be sure it's the right man you're talking to. Tell him that the New York gentleman he wanted to speak to—just that: the New York gentleman he wanted to speak to—is out of town, but has telegraphed you to say to him it is all right for him to go ahead. Got that?"

"Yes, sir."

"Read it."

The secretary read from his notes.

"Now," said the business man, "get Mr. Rivington and Mr. Hallett on your own 'phone and ask them if they can find it convenient to come around here to see me for a half-hour. Tell me what they say, and then give me Atwood and the other brokers in the regular order."

"Yes, sir."

"And, Rollins——"

"Yes, sir?"

"When Mr. Hallett and Mr. Rivington arrive, we are not to be disturbed."

The secretary went; the brokers were given their orders, and then came L. Bergen Rivington and George J. Hallett, the two men with whom this third man was now consulting.

"About the Manhattan and Niagara——" began Rivington. He had a way of moving his hands nervously when he spoke, and he rarely completed a sentence.

Hallett, who was the man in a white waistcoat, stopped chewing his cigar to ask:

"What are they kickin' about? We own seventy-five per cent. of the preferred and sixty of the common."

"And it is too much, I think," said Rivington. "We need it only to keep from unsettling the N. Y. & N. J. interests, because—— Fifty-five of the preferred and fifty-two of the common, perhaps, but seventy-five and sixty——"

"And, now," chimed Hallett, "this little fellow—what's his name?—the president. Oh, yes: Dohan, that's it—starts out to launch a new stock-issue to bridge the river five miles from town and come into New York, an' all without as much as sayin' 'If you please' to us! We ought to wreck his damned picayune road for him; that's what we ought to do."

The two continued their indignant comments. Every little while they paused to give the crouching man at the head of the table a chance to speak, and more often they looked at him to see whether he wanted to speak; but, though his eyes were always alert to meet theirs, he did not, for some time, utter a word.

"Of course," said Rivington, "we are not directors of the road, but still——"

"Oh, hell!" grunted Hallett disgustedly. "Didn't you just say between us we owned all the stock worth ownin'? We ought to unload and smash 'em."

"You may be right. I am inclined to think——"

"Right? Of course I'm right. I'm not goin' to be bullied by a handful of dummies when I can sell them up as if I was a sheriff closing down on a crossroads grocery store!"

"They certainly are impudent and——"

"They're beggars on horseback! Wastin' our money like this!"

"They have—— We should tell the legislature——"

"Gentlemen,"—it was the clear, crisp voice of the man at the head of the table that interrupted; he spoke in a tone somewhat different from that in which he habitually addressed his clerks and his brokers, but he spoke as suddenly and with all the authority that he used toward them—"if the M. & N. comes into New York, it will not take one-half of one per cent. of the profits away from our other roads. For all but its last thirty-two miles, the new line taps territory new to us, and the new stock will have paid for itself, and have paid a profit too, in five years."

Rivington and Hallett looked at each other. The latter took his cigar between his fingers and folded his arms.

"What do we care?" he asked, but his tone had lost the assertiveness that had marked it a moment earlier. The man at the head of the table did not answer this question directly. He proceeded:

"Except for ourselves, most of the old stockholders are poor people. They need the money, and the old holders are to have the first chance at the new issue. In five years, then, the minor stockholders will have realized a profit on their investment; so shall we. At that time we could unload without hurting anybody but the officials that have defied us. Always supposing," he added, "that the management observe a proper economy."

Hallett's eyes burned.

"You're right," he said. "We can win both ways if we do that. The road will be bankrupt, and we can buy it in."

The man at the head of the table did not smile. He only said:

"You have always been very naïve, Hallett; but I did think you would have seen this point sooner."

Rivington at length cut in:

"But the cost of getting the bill through the legislature——"

"The bill will pass this morning," said the man at the head of the table. "The Governor will sign it immediately."

His certainty silenced them for a moment; but Rivington, whom the outside world pictured as a pirate, was still timid.

"Yes," he said, "but the expense of the city ordinance——"

"Oh, we'll take care of that," grinned Hallett.

"And the cost of construction——"

"I said," repeated the man at the head of the table: "'Always supposing the management observe a proper economy.'"

He settled back in his chair. He seemed to consider the subject closed, and so, presently, did his companions. Within five minutes they had left him, and he was ringing for Rollins.

"Rollins," he said, "take this letter."

The secretary seated himself at the far end of the table.

His employer walked to a window and looked out. His hands were clasped behind him now, and he did not turn his head as he rapidly dictated: