The Metropolis Part 18

"Is that really done?" asked Montague.

"Done!" exclaimed the Major. "It's done so often you might say it's the only thing that's done.--The people are probably trying to take you in with a fake."

"That couldn't possibly be so," responded the other. "The man is a friend--"

"I've found it an excellent rule never to do business with friends,"

said the Major, grimly.

"But listen," said Montague; and he argued long enough to convince his companion that that could not be the true explanation. Then the Major sat for a minute or two and pondered; and suddenly he exclaimed, "I have it! I see why they won't touch it!"

"What is it?"

"It's the coal companies! They're giving the steamships short weight, and they don't want the coal weighed truly!"

"But there's no sense in that," said Montague. "It's the steamship companies that won't take the machine."

"Yes," said the Major; "naturally, their officers are sharing the graft." And he laughed heartily at Montague's look of perplexity.

"Do you know anything about the business?" Montague asked.

"Nothing whatever," said the Major. "I am like the German who shut himself up in his inner consciousness and deduced the shape of an elephant from first principles. I know the game of big business from A to Z, and I'm telling you that if the invention is good and the companies won't take it, that's the reason; and I'll lay you a wager that if you were to make an investigation, some such thing as that is what you'd find! Last winter I went South on a steamer, and when we got near port, I saw them dumping a ton or two of good food overboard; and I made inquiries, and learned that one of the officials of the company ran a farm, and furnished the stuff--and the orders were to get rid of so much every trip!"

Montague's jaw had fallen. "What could Major Thorne do against such a combination?" he asked.

"I don't know," said the Major, shrugging his shoulders. "It's a case to take to a lawyer--one who knows the ropes. Hawkins over there would know what to tell you. I should imagine the thing he'd advise would be to call a strike of the men who handle the coal, and tie up the companies and bring them to terms."

"You're joking now!" exclaimed the other.

"Not at all," said the Major, laughing again. "It's done all the time.

There's a building trust in this city, and the way it put all its rivals out of business was by having strikes called on their jobs."

"But how could it do that?"

"Easiest thing in the world. A labour leader is a man with a great deal of power, and a very small salary to live on. And even if he won't sell out--there are other ways. I could introduce you to a man right in this room who had a big strike on at an inconvenient time, and he had the president of the union trapped in a hotel with a woman, and the poor fellow gave in and called off the strike."'

"I should think the strikers might sometimes get out of hand," said Montague.

"Sometimes they do," smiled the other. "There is a regular procedure for that case. Then you hire detectives and start violence, and call out the militia and put the strike leaders into jail."

Montague could think of nothing to say to that. The programme seemed to be complete.

"You see," the Major continued, earnestly, "I'm advising you as a friend, and I'm taking the point of view of a man who has money in his pocket. I've had some there always, but I've had to work hard to keep it there. All my life I've been surrounded by people who wanted to do me good; and the way they wanted to do it was to exchange my real money for pieces of paper which they'd had printed with fancy scroll-work and eagles and flags. Of course, if you want to look at the thing from the other side, why, then the invention is most ingenious, and trade is booming just now, and this is a great country, and merit is all you need in it--and everything else is just as it ought to be. It makes all the difference in the world, you know, whether a man is buying a horse or selling him!"

Montague had observed with perplexity that such incendiary talk as this was one of the characteristics of people in these lofty alt.i.tudes. It was one of the liberties accorded to their station. Editors and bishops and statesmen and all the rest of their retainers had to believe in the respectabilities, even in the privacy of their clubs--the people's ears were getting terribly sharp these days! But among the real giants of business you might have thought yourself in a society of revolutionists; they would tear up the mountain tops and hurl them at each other. When one of these old war-horses once got started, he would tell tales of deviltry to appall the soul of the hardiest muck-rake man. It was always the other fellow, of course; but then, if you pinned your man down, and if he thought that he could trust you--he would acknowledge that he had sometimes fought the enemy with the enemy's own weapons!

But of course one must understand that all this radicalism was for conversational purposes only. The Major, for instance, never had the slightest idea of doing anything about all the evils of which he told; when it came to action, he proposed to do just what he had done all his life--to sit tight on his own little pile. And the Millionaires' was an excellent place to learn to do it!

"See that old money-bags over there in the corner," said the Major.

"He's a man you want to fix in your mind--old Henry S. Grimes. Have you heard of him?"

"Vaguely," said the other.

"He's Laura Hegan's uncle. She'll have his money also some day--but Lord, how he does hold on to it meantime! It's quite tragic, if you come to know him--he's frightened at his own shadow. He goes in for slum tenements, and I guess he evicts more people in a month than you could crowd into this building!"

Montague looked at the solitary figure at the table, a man with a wizened-up little face like a weasel's, and a big napkin tied around his neck. "That's so as to save his shirt-front for to-morrow," the Major explained. "He's really only about sixty, but you'd think he was eighty. Three times every day he sits here and eats a bowl of graham crackers and milk, and then goes out and sits rigid in an arm-chair for an hour. That's the regimen his doctors have put him on--angels and ministers of grace defend us!"

The old gentleman paused, and a chuckle shook his scarlet jowls. "Only think!" he said--"they tried to do that to me! But no, sir--when Bob Venable has to eat graham crackers and milk, he'll put in a.r.s.enic instead of sugar! That's the way with many a one of these rich fellows, though--you picture him living in Capuan luxury, when, as a matter of fact, he's a man with a torpid liver and a weak stomach, who is put to bed at ten o'clock with a hot-water bag and a flannel night-cap!"

The two had got up and were strolling toward the smoking-room; when suddenly at one side a door opened, and a group of men came out. At the head of them was an extraordinary figure, a big powerful body with a grim face. "h.e.l.lo!" said the Major. "All the big bugs are here to-night. There must be a governors' meeting."

"Who is that?" asked his companion; and he answered, "That? Why, that's Dan Waterman."

Dan Waterman! Montague stared harder than ever, and now he identified the face with the pictures he had seen. Waterman, the Colossus of finance, the Croesus of copper and gold! How many trusts had Waterman organized! And how many puns had been made upon that name of his!

"Who are the other men?" Montague asked.

"Oh, they're just little millionaires," was the reply.

The "little millionaires" were following as a kind of body-guard; one of them, who was short and pudgy, was half running, to keep up with Waterman's heavy stride. When they came to the coat-room, they crowded the attendants away, and one helped the great man on with his coat, and another held his hat, and another his stick, and two others tried to talk to him. And Waterman stolidly b.u.t.toned his coat, and then seized his hat and stick, and without a word to anyone, bolted through the door.

It was one of the funniest sights that Montague had ever seen in his life, and he laughed all the way into the smoking-room. And, when Major Venable had settled himself in a big chair and bitten off the end of a cigar and lighted it, what floodgates of reminiscence were opened!

For Dan Waterman was one of the Major's own generation, and he knew all his life and his habits. Just as Montague had seen him there, so he had been always; swift, imperious, terrible, trampling over all opposition; the most powerful men in the city quailed before the glare of his eyes.

In the old days Wall Street had reeled in the shock of the conflicts between him and his most powerful rival.

And the Major went on to tell about Waterman's rival, and his life. He had been the city's traction-king, old Wyman had been made by him. He was the prince among political financiers; he had ruled the Democratic party in state and nation. He would give a quarter of a million at a time to the boss of Tammany Hall, and spend a million in a single campaign; on "dough-day," when the district leaders came to get the election funds, there would be a table forty feet long completely covered with hundred-dollar bills. He would have been the richest man in America, save that he spent his money as fast as he got it. He had had the most famous racing-stable in America; and a house on Fifth Avenue that was said to be the finest Italian palace in the world. Over three millions had been spent in decorating it; all the ceilings had been brought intact from palaces abroad, which he had bought and demolished! The Major told a story to show how such a man lost all sense of the value of money; he had once been sitting at lunch with him, when the editor of one of his newspapers had come in and remarked, "I told you we would need eight thousand dollars, and the check you send is for ten." "I know it," was the smiling answer--"but somehow I thought eight seemed harder to write than ten!"

"Old Waterman's quite a spender, too, when it comes to that," the Major went on. "He told me once that it cost him five thousand dollars a day for his ordinary expenses. And that doesn't include a million-dollar yacht, nor even the expenses of it.

"And think of another man I know of who spent a million dollars for a granite pier, so that he could land and see his mistress!--It's a fact, as sure as G.o.d made me! She was a well-known society woman, but she was poor, and he didn't dare to make her rich for fear of the scandal. So she had to live in a miserable fifty-thousand-dollar villa; and when other people's children would sneer at her children because they lived in a fifty-thousand-dollar villa, the answer would be, 'But you haven't got any pier!' And if you don't believe that--"

But here suddenly the Major turned, and observed a boy who had brought him some cigars, and who was now standing near by, pretending to straighten out some newspapers upon the table. "Here, sir!" cried the Major, "what do you mean--listening to what I'm saying! Out of the room with you now, you rascal!"

CHAPTER XIII

Another week-end came, and with it an invitation from the Lester Todds to visit them at their country place in New Jersey. Montague was buried in his books, but his brother routed him out with strenuous protests.

His case be d.a.m.ned--was he going to ruin his career for one case? At all hazards, he must meet people--"people who counted." And the Todds were such, a big money crowd, and a power in the insurance world; if Montague were going to be an insurance lawyer, he could not possibly decline their invitation. Freddie Vandam would be a guest--and Montague smiled at the tidings that Betty Wyman would be there also. He had observed that his brother's week-end visits always happened at places where Betty was, and where Betty's granddaddy was not.

So Montague's man packed his grips, and Alice's maid her trunks; and they rode with a private-car party to a remote Jersey suburb, and were whirled in an auto up a broad sh.e.l.l road to a palace upon the top of a mountain. Here lived the haughty Lester Todds, and scattered about on the neighbouring hills, a set of the ultra-wealthy who had withdrawn to this seclusion. They were exceedingly "cla.s.sy"; they affected to regard all the Society of the city with scorn, and had their own all-the-year-round diversions--an open-air horse show in summer, and in the fall fox-hunting in fancy uniforms.

The Lester Todds themselves were ardent pursuers of all varieties of game, and in various clubs and private preserves they followed the seasons, from Florida and North Carolina to Ontario, with occasional side trips to Norway, and New Brunswick, and British Columbia. Here at home they had a whole mountain of virgin forest, carefully preserved; and in the Renaissance palace at the summit-which they carelessly referred to as a "lodge"--you would find such articles de vertu as a ten-thousand-dollar table with a set of two-thousand-dollar chairs, and quite ordinary-looking rugs at ten and twenty thousand dollars each.--All these prices you might ascertain without any difficulty at all, because there were many newspaper articles describing the house to be read in an alb.u.m in the hall. On Sat.u.r.day afternoons Mrs. Todd welcomed the neighbours in a pastel grey reception-gown, the front of which contained a peac.o.c.k embroidered in silk, with jewels in every feather, and a diamond solitaire for an eye; and in the evening there was a dance, and she appeared in a gown with several hundred diamonds sewn upon it, and received her guests upon a rug set with jewels to match.

All together, Montague judged this the "fastest" set he had yet encountered; they ate more and drank more and intrigued more openly. He had been slowly acquiring the special lingo of Society, but these people had so much more slang that he felt all lost again. A young lady who was gossiping to him about those present remarked that a certain youth was a "spasm"; and then, seeing the look of perplexity upon his face, she laughed, "I don't believe you know what I mean!" Montague replied that he had ventured to infer that she did not like him.

And then there was Mrs. Harper, who came from Chicago by way of London.