Читать книгу Below the Salt - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 12

The ride to the house in the hills had seemed to John an interminably long one. Amy Shirley made it twice a day but she was an expert rider and it took her no more than a half hour each way. On the fifth morning he rode out to meet her, looking a little self-conscious but with a sure enough saddle and a good hand. She drew in by the side of the road and waited for him.

“Well!” she said. “You’ve been coming on!”

“I’ve been working at it,” he explained. “Hard. Every day. And enjoying every minute of it.”

“I suspect you had a natural turn for it. Have you breakfasted yet?”

“Yep. Had a bite in the kitchen this morning because I wanted to surprise you. The senator’s sitting down to his now.”

“That stubborn mule! Have you read the news stories and the editorials about his retirement? The whole country regrets it. Look at that additional bag of mail we’ve brought today. It’s filled with letters, begging him to reconsider. But he won’t! I know that stiff-necked old-timer. He’s made up his mind and nothing will change him.” They were riding slowly along together now and the mail carrier had dropped to the rear. “John, have you any inkling of his reason? I mean, what is it he’s planning to do?”

John shook his head. “He hasn’t said another word about it. But I have a hunch he thinks something should be done to convince people that radical changes in our way of life and government would throw us back into a stage from which we emerged with the greatest difficulty. He says it took us centuries to escape from slavery and that what these wild-eyed communists are trying to do is to clap the handcuffs back on our wrists again. That sounds pretty old stuff but I think he has some way in mind to drive the truth home.”

“And how does he plan to go about it?”

“I haven’t the foggiest idea.”

There was a moment’s silence. “The way he can do the most good is to stay right on his job. Have you ever heard him speak? Well, you’ve certainly missed something. That is when he’s really convincing. And you ought to see him in a committee meeting! I have, many times. He’s a wonder when he gets his feet under a table and starts to talk common sense. He has the air cleared and a straight, clean path mapped out in no time at all. It’s a damned shame that we’re going to lose him.”

“Well,” said John, “whatever it is he plans to do, he’s very happy about it. He whistles and hums and once, when he didn’t know I was watching, he did a kind of shuffling dance step.”

“The old galoot! I feel sometimes that I’d like to take a broomstick to him.” They were now on the last upward grade. “Well, the usual is happening. All that a stock ever needs to go down right into the cellar is for me to buy a share or two. We bought into Boncolenco yesterday. And what do you suppose happened?”

“Did the stock go down?” John’s face had taken on an expression of the most intense worry.

“Yes. The stock went down, the very instant after the transaction was completed. But only a quarter of a point. Just give it time, and it’ll do a lot better than that! At this stage I feel as though I have a profit, I’ve been so consistently unlucky.”

“Don’t you think that it’s going up?”

“If I thought that,” she declared, “it would be a case, as someone said, of optimism triumphing over the lessons of bitter experience.”

There was a long pause. “Then,” said John with a deep sigh, “I guess it’s good-by to the profit I made on the tollgate deal.”

But the next morning Boncolenco Power was up a full point. “If it keeps on this way,” said Amy Shirley, when he rode out again to meet her, “I won’t be out on the deal more than the brokerage charges.”

Two days later she waved a hand to him as she came riding along at a faster gait than usual.

“Good morning, partner!” she called to him. “How does it feel to be a rich man?”

“Do you mean,” cried John, “do you really mean that the stock is showing a profit?”

“A profit?” The secretary reined in her horse and indulged in a laugh. “That’s an understatement for you! What a young gloom hound you are! John, Boncolenco really started to climb yesterday. Before the market closed, that stock had gone up, up, up——Of course we got out before the finish.”

“How much did we make?” eagerly.

“Take a good hold on the reins now. I don’t want you tumbling out of the saddle or anything like that. We each made a profit of something over twelve thousand dollars!”

John galloped the rest of the way up the hill and then turned and came back, waving his hat above his head and cheering wildly. “Yip-ee! Did you say twelve thousand? That means I have more than fourteen thousand profit altogether. Isn’t that wonderful! I can hardly believe it. Why, I’ve got enough now to make a start on that Congdon business.”

“Huh! You’ll have enough for that after, say, fifty more deals as profitable as this one.”

John slowed down at that and looked rather abashed. “Honestly, I thought I could make a kind of a start on it with what I have.”

“You’ll need a half million,” she declared. “Not a dollar less. And anyway you aren’t going to have any time for that kind of thing. I rather think the senator has entirely different plans for you.”

That evening, after the senator had selected his cigar and was puffing happily, he began to speak again of the days when Magna Charta was signed.

“I don’t want you to think I’m hipped on the subject,” he said. “But I was wondering. In your reading, did you ever come across the story of a beautiful princess who lived at that time? One so very lovely that they called her the Pearl of Brittany?”

John thought this over and then shook his head. “Don’t think so. She couldn’t have been mentioned or I would most certainly have remembered her.”

“Well,” puffing slowly, “I’ll tell you about her. In the first place, this was the family setup. First there was old King Henry II and there have been few better than he was. He had married Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was the greatest heiress in the world. She owned half of France, including all the land on the Bay of Biscay. She was beautiful when she was young and a real high-stepper. Now she had settled down and become a pretty wise woman. They had a large family. First there was Prince Henry, the oldest son, who died before his father. The second son was Richard the Lionhearted. The third son was named Geoffrey, and finally came John. There were a few daughters, all lovely girls. They are known in history as the Plantagenets, you’ll remember, because of a flower they wore as a crest. The Plantagenet sons were terrific young fellows, proud, violent, quarrelsome, and fighting fools, all of them. And they were handsome; they looked the way kings and princes are supposed to look, but so seldom do. They were tall and strong and as blond as ripe corn and they had blazing blue eyes; all except John, who was as dark as Satan. The third son, Geoffrey, was the handsomest of them all. He had been married to Constance of Brittany and they had two children, a daughter Eleanor and a boy Arthur. Geoffrey himself was dead by this time and so was the old king, and when King Richard, who was always fighting, got himself killed at the siege of a castle in France, the succession should have come to young Prince Arthur. But John settled that by murdering Arthur and grabbing the throne himself.

“Now the princess I started to tell you about was this little Eleanor, Arthur’s sister. She looked exactly like her father and so she was probably the loveliest girl in all Europe. Something had to be done about her, so John got her into his hands and locked her up in a castle, the strongest in the country. No one knew where she was and the people of Brittany, who considered her their rightful ruler after Arthur’s death, were afraid she had been killed by her wicked uncle. Even after John died, and his nine-year-old son had been chosen to succeed him, the barons of England kept this unfortunate girl under lock and key. They didn’t want another claimant to the throne at large. They’d had enough of that kind of thing. They wanted peace, even if it meant keeping her as close as the Man in the Iron Mask. Later the princess was removed to another castle and in a few years it was given out she had died. Perhaps she had. On the other hand, perhaps she went right on living. How do we know?”

The old man settled back into his chair. He began to puff again on his cigar. “John, I want to talk to you about my will. I’m sure you’re interested in what I’ve got to say. Now don’t protest. It’s only natural for you to feel an interest. I’ve got a great deal to leave and I could leave it in any number of ways, couldn’t I?

“Well, I have very definite ideas about the leaving of property,” he went on. “I don’t think there’s any justification for leaving all you’ve got to other people, young ones mostly, who don’t have to work any more. With what I’ve got I could make drones or parasites out of a great many people; and there are plenty quite willing to be made into ’em if I decide to leave them as much as they would like to have. It is my solid and unchangeable conviction, John, that money should be left for the general welfare, and I’ve devoted a great deal of time and thought to the problem of what I should do with mine. My will, which was made in its present and final form some years ago, is based on that line of thought. But I haven’t taken the easy way, which is to leave the money in great big blocks to a few institutions or to certain causes. I’ve broken it up into many smaller donations—a million here, a hundred thousand there, fifty thousand somewhere else. I’ve studied the need to which each donation is to be applied and in every case I can see that the benefit will be felt in a personal and real way by a great many people.

“You’ll understand now, John,” he continued, “that too much of the money is earmarked for this and that to allow for any great fortunes being willed to individuals. I’m leaving legacies, of course, to quite a few people; but in no case will the beneficiary be able to sit down on his or her roundabout and have racing stables and villas in Italy or devote a lifetime to cutting coupons and collecting first editions. I’ve made only one change in my will in the last few years. I made it yesterday. I signed a codicil, leaving a legacy to you, my boy. One of the kind I’ve been talking about. A nice, sizable chunk of change but not a fortune.”

“Whatever you’ve done, sir, is more than generous, I’m sure,” declared John, finding it hard to speak. “I’m not entitled to anything. I know that. I—I don’t see any way of letting you know how grateful I am.”

“There may be a way. Pretty soon, in fact. But we won’t talk of that now. All I want to add to what I’ve already said is that I’m putting you into my will because I’ve taken a fancy to you. And also—well, it’s for your grandmother’s sake. I’ve something to make up for, you know. I can’t do it this way. I know that. But Lucy will know what I’ve done and it will make her happy, I think.”

Before John could say anything further the old man changed the subject; or, at least, he took up the question of finances from another angle. In a hearty voice he said: “In the meantime, you and I can go on making some money for ourselves. Which will, in your case, sort of back up the bit I’m leaving you. What do you say to another little speculation? A sort of dead certain speculation, if there is such a thing. And how about really going it this time, really going whole hog?”

“Yes, sir!” cried John eagerly. “I’ve got some capital now. Thanks to you, sir, of course. I’ve got fourteen thousand dollars. I guess I can afford to go really whole hog.”

“I’ll put you into a new issue of an industrial concern called El Dorado Light and Power. It’s a sound concern. In fact, if the securities of old El ever got shaky we could expect the end of the world—the financial world, of course. So this time it shall be—five thousand shares for you, young Mr. Plunger Foraday. For several days only, I mean.”

“Right you are, sir! Shoot the works. Five thousand shares it is, sir.”