The Phantom Of Manhattan Part 2

Boyton wanted to pay Darius for 'his' inventions, but I stopped him. Instead I demanded ten cents in the dollar for everything earned by those six rides, for a period of ten years. Boyton had sunk everything he had into his funfair and was deep in debt. Within a month those rides, monitored by Darius, were bringing in a hundred dollars a week to us alone. But there was much more to come.

The successor to political boss McKane was a red-haired firebrand called George Tilyou. He too wanted to open a funfair and cash in on the boom. Regardless of the rage of Boyton, who could do nothing about it, I designed even more ingenious diversions for Tilyou's enterprise on the same basis, a percentage franchise. Steeplechase Park opened in 1897 and began to bring us a thousand dollars a day. By then I had bought and moved to a pleasant bungalow nearer to Manhattan Beach. Neighbours were few and mostly at weekends, times when I was, in my clown's costume, circulating freely among the tourists between the two amus.e.m.e.nt parks.

There were frequent boxing tournaments on Coney Island with very heavy betting by the millionaire gentry arriving on the new elevated train from Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan Beach Hotel. I watched but did not gamble, convinced that most fights were fixed. Gambling was illegal throughout New York and Brooklyn, indeed all of New York State. But on Coney Island, last outpost of the Crime Frontier, huge sums changed hands as bookmakers took the gamblers' money. In 1899 Jim Jeffries challenged Bob Fitzsimmons for the world heavyweight t.i.tle - on Coney Island. Our joint fortune was by then $250,000 and I intended to place it all on the challenger, Jeffries, at long odds. Darius almost went mad with rage until I explained my idea.

I had noticed that between rounds the fighters almost always took a long swig of fresh water from a bottle, sometimes but not always spitting it out. At my instruction Darius, masquerading as a sports reporter, simply switched Fitzsimmons's bottle for one laced with sedative. Jeffries knocked him out. I collected a million dollars. Later that year Jeffries defended his t.i.tle against Sailor Tom Sharkey at the Coney Island Athletic Club. Same scam, same result. Poor Sharkey. We netted two million. It was time to move up-island and upmarket, for I had been studying the affairs of an even wilder and more lawless funfair for the making of money: the New York Stock Exchange. But there was still one last strike to be made on Coney Island.

Two hustlers called Frederic Thompson and Skip Dundy were desperate to open a third and even bigger amus.e.m.e.nt park. The first was an alcoholic engineer and the second a stuttering financier, and so urgent was their need for cash that they were already into the banks for more than they were worth. I had Darius create a 'sh.e.l.l' company, a loan corporation which stunned them by offering an unsecured loan at zero interest. Instead, the E.M. Corporation wanted 10 per cent of the gross take of Luna Park for a decade. They agreed. They had no choice; it was that or bankruptcy with a half-finished funfair. Luna Park opened on 2 May 1903. At 9 a.m. Thompson and Dundy were bankrupt. At sundown they had paid off all their debts - bar mine. Within the first four months Luna Park had grossed five million dollars. It levelled at a million a month and still does. By then we had moved to Manhattan.

I started in a modest brownstone house, staying inside most of the time, for here the clown's disguise was useless. Darius joined the Stock Exchange on my behalf, following my instructions as I pored over corporate reports and the details of new share issues. It soon became plain that in this amazing country everything was booming. New ideas and projects, if skilfully promoted, were immediately subscribed. The economy was expanding at a lunatic rate, pushing westwards and ever westwards. With every new industry there was a demand for raw materials, along with ships and railroads to deliver them and haul away the product to the waiting markets.

Through the years I had been on Coney Island the immigrants had been pouring in by the million from every land to east and west. The Lower East Side, almost beneath my terrace as I now look down, was and remains a vast teeming cauldron of every race and creed living cheek by jowl in poverty, violence, vice and crime. Only a mile away the super-rich have their mansions, their coaches and their beloved opera.

By 1903, after a few mishaps, I had mastered the intricacies of the stock market and worked out how the giants like Pierpont Morgan had made their fortunes. Like them I moved into coal in West Virginia, steel in Pittsburgh, railroads out to Texas, shipping from Savannah via Baltimore to Boston, silver in New Mexico and property throughout Manhattan Island. But I became better and harder than them, through single-minded worship of the only true G.o.d, to whom Darius had led me. For this is Mammon the G.o.d of gold who permits no mercy, no charity, no compa.s.sion and no scruple. There is no widow, no child, no pauper wretch who cannot be crushed a little more for a few extra granules of the precious metal that so pleases the master. With the gold comes the power and with the power even more gold in one glorious world-conquering cycle.

In all things I am and remain Darius's master and superior. In all things save one. Never was created on this planet a colder or more cruel man. A creature more dead of soul never walked. In this he is beyond me. And yet he has his weakness. Just one. On a certain night, curious about his rare absences, I had him followed. He went to a den in the Moorish community and there took hashish until he was in a sort of trance. It seems this is his only flaw. Once I thought he might be my friend, but I have long since learned he has but one; his worship of gold consumes him night and day, and he stays with me and loyal to me only because I can spin it in endless quant.i.ties.

By 1903 I had enough to undertake the construction of the highest skysc.r.a.per in New York, the E.M. Tower on a vacant lot on Park Row. It was completed in 1904, forty storeys of steel, concrete, granite and gla.s.s. And the real beauty is that the thirty-seven storeys let out beneath me have paid for it all and the value has doubled. That leaves one suite for the corporation staff, linked by phone and ticker-tape to the markets; a floor above being half of it the apartment of Darius and half the corporate boardroom; and above them all my own penthouse with its upper terrace dominating everything I can see and yet ensuring that I myself cannot be seen.

So ... my cage on wheels, my gloomy cellars have become an eyrie in the sky where I can walk unmasked and none to see my face from h.e.l.l but the pa.s.sing gulls and the wind from the south. And from here I can even see the finally finished and gleaming roof of my one and single indulgence, my one project that is not dedicated to making more money but to the extraction of revenge.

Far in the distance at West 34th Street stands the newly completed Manhattan Opera House, the rival that will set the sn.o.bby Metropolitan by the ears. When I came here I wanted to see opera again, but of course I needed a screened and curtained box at the Met. The committee there, dominated by Mrs Astor and her cronies of the social register, the d.a.m.nable Four Hundred, required me to appear in person for an interview. Impossible, of course. I sent Darius, but they refused to accept him, demanding to see me in person and face to face. They will pay for that insult. For I found another opera-lover who had been snubbed. Oscar Hammerstein, having already opened one opera house and failed, was financing and designing a new one. I became his invisible partner. It will open in December and will wipe the floor with the Met. No expense will be spared. The great Bonci will star but most of all Melba herself, yes Melba, will come and sing. Even now Hammerstein is at Garnier's Grand Hotel on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, spending my money to bring her to New York.

An unprecedented feat. I will make those sn.o.bs, the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Whitneys, Goulds, Astors and Morgans crawl before they listen to the great Melba.

For the rest, I look out and I look down. Yes, and back. A life of pain and rejection, of fear and hatred: you of me and I of you. Only one showed me kindness, took me from a cage to a cellar and then to a ship when the rest were hunting me like a winded fox; one who was like the mother I hardly had or knew.

And one other, whom I loved but who could not love me. You despise me for that also, Human Race? Because I could not make a woman love me as a man? But there was one moment, one short time, like Chesterton's donkey 'one far fierce hour and sweet' when I thought I might be loved ... Ashes, cinders, nothing. Not to be. Never to be. So there can only be the other love, the devotion to the master who never lets me down. And him I will worship all my life.

3.

THE DESPAIR OF ARMAND DUFOUR.

BROADWAY, NEW YORK CITY, OCTOBER 1906.

I HATE THIS CITY. I SHOULD NEVER HAVE COME. WHY on earth did I come? Because of the wish of a woman dying in Paris who, for all I know, may well have been deranged. And for the bag of gold Napoleons, of course. But even that, perhaps I should never have taken it.

Where is this man to whom I am supposed to deliver a letter that makes no sense? All Fr Sebastien could tell me was that he is hideously disfigured and should therefore be noticeable. But it is the reverse; he is invisible.

I am becoming every day more sure that he never got here. No doubt he was refused entry by the officers at Ellis Island. I went there - what chaos. The whole world of the poor and the dispossessed seems to be pouring into this country and most of them remain right here in this awful city. I have never seen so many down-and-outs: columns of shabby refugees, smelly, even louse-ridden from the voyage in stinking holds, clutching ragged parcels with all their worldly possessions, filing in endless ranks through those bleak buildings on that hopeless island. Towering over them all from the other island is the statue that we gave them. The lady with the torch. We should have told Bartholdi to keep his d.a.m.n statue in France and given the Yankees something else instead. A good set of Larousse dictionaries perhaps, so they could have learned a civilized language.

But no, we had to give them something symbolic. Now they have turned it into a magnet for every derelict in Europe and far beyond to come flocking in here looking for a better life. Quelle blague! Quelle blague! They are crazy, these Yankees. How do they ever expect to create a nation by letting such people in? The rejects from every country between Bantry Bay and Brest-Litovsk, from Trondheim to Taormino. What do they expect? To make a rich and powerful nation one day out of this rabble? They are crazy, these Yankees. How do they ever expect to create a nation by letting such people in? The rejects from every country between Bantry Bay and Brest-Litovsk, from Trondheim to Taormino. What do they expect? To make a rich and powerful nation one day out of this rabble?

I went to see the Chief Immigration Officer. Thank G.o.d, he had a French-speaker available. But he said though few were turned back those clearly diseased or deformed were rejected, so my man would almost certainly have been among that group. Even if he did get in, it has been twelve years. He could be anywhere in this country and it is three thousand miles from east to west.

So I returned to the city authorities, but they pointed out there were five boroughs and virtually no residence records. The man could be in Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, Staten Island. So I have no choice but to stay here on Manhattan Island and seek this runaway from justice. What a task for a good Frenchman!

They have records at City Hall listing a dozen Muhlheims, and I have tried them all. If his name was Smith I would go home now. They even have many telephones here, and a list of those who own them, but no Erik Muhlheim. I have asked the taxation authorities but they say their records are confidential.

The police were better. I found an Irish sergeant who said he would search, for a fee. I know d.a.m.n well the 'fee' went into his trouser pocket. But he went away and came back to say that no Muhlheim had ever been in trouble with the police but he had half a dozen Mullers if that was any help. Imbecile.

There is a circus out on Long Island and I went there. Another blank. I tried their great hospital called Bellevue but they have no record of a man so deformed ever presenting himself for treatment. I can think of nowhere else to go.

I lodge in a modest hotel in the back streets behind this great boulevard. I eat their horrible stews and drink their awful beer. I sleep in a narrow cot and wish I was back in my apartment on the Ile St Louis, warm and comfortable and pressed against the fine fat b.u.t.tocks of Mme Dufour. It is getting colder and the money is running short. I want to return to my beloved Paris, to a civilized city where people walk instead of running everywhere, a place where the carriages drive sedately instead of racing like maniacs and the trams are not a danger to life and limb.

To make matters worse I thought I could speak some words of the perfidious language of Shakespeare, for I have seen and heard the English milords who come to race their horses at Auteuil and Chantilly, but here they speak through their noses and very very fast.

Yesterday I saw an Italian coffee-shop on this same street serving good mocha and even Chianti wine. Not Bordeaux, of course, but better than that p.i.s.s-making Yankee beer. Ah, I see it even now, across this deadly dangerous street. I will take a good strong coffee for my nerves' sake, then return and book my pa.s.sage home.

4.

THE LUCK OF CHOLLY BLOOM.

LOUIE'S BAR, FIFTH AVENUE AT 28TH STREET, NEW YORK CITY, OCTOBER 1906 I TELL YOU GUYS, THERE ARE TIMES WHEN BEING A reporter in the fastest, hummingest city in the world is the greatest job on earth. OK, we all know that there are hours and days of foot-slogging and nothing to show for it; leads that go nowhere, interviews rebuffed, no story. Right? Barney, can we have another round of beers here?

Yep, there are times when there's no scandal at City Hall (not many, of course), no celebrity divorce, no bodies at dawn in Central Park and life loses its sparkle. Then you think: what am I doing here, why am I wasting my time? Maybe I really should have taken over my dad's outfitters in Poughkeepsie. We all know the feeling.

But that's the point. That's what makes it better than selling men's pants in Poughkeepsie. Suddenly out of left field something happens and, if you're smart, you see a great story right within your grasp. Happened to me yesterday. Gotta tell you about it. Thanks, Barney.

It was in this coffee-shop. You know Fellini's? On Broadway at Twenty-sixth. A bad day. Spent most of it chasing up a new lead on the Central Park murders and nothing. The Mayor's office is screaming at the Bureau of Detectives and they have nothing new, so they're in a temper and saying nothing worth printing. I face the prospect of going back to city desk to say I don't even have a column-inch worth printing. So I thought I'll go in and have one of Papa Fellini's fudge sundaes. Plenty of maple. You know the one? Keeps you going.

So it's crowded. I take the last booth. Ten minutes later a guy walks in looking miserable as sin. He looks around, sees I have a booth to myself and walks over. Very polite. Bows. I nod. He says something in a foreign lingo. I point to the spare chair. He sits down and orders a coffee. Only he doesn't p.r.o.nounce it kauphy, he says kaffay. The waiter's Italian, so that's fine by him. Only I reckon this guy is probably French. Why? He just looked French. So, being polite, I greeted him. In French.

Do I speak French? Is the Chief Rabbi Jewish? Well, all right, a little French. So I says to him, 'Bonjewer, Mon-sewer.' Just trying to be a good New Yorker.

Well, this Frenchie goes crazy. He launches into a torrent of French that is way above my head. And he's distressed, nearly in tears. Reaches into his pocket and brings out a letter, very important-looking, with wax over the flap and a kind of seal. Waves it in my face.

Now at this point I am still trying to be nice to a visitor in distress. The temptation is to finish the ice-cream, throw down a dime and get out of there. But instead I think, what the h.e.l.l, let's try and help this guy because he seems to have had a worse day than I have, and that is saying something. So I call over Papa Fellini and ask if he speaks French. No chance. Italian or English only and even the English with a Sicilian accent. Then I think: who speaks French around here?

Now you guys would have shrugged and walked out, right? And you'd have missed something. But I'm Cholly Bloom, the sixth-sense man. And what stands just one block away at Twenty-sixth and Fifth? Delmonico's. And who runs Delmonico's? Why, Charlie Delmonico. And where does the Delmonico family come from? All right, Switzerland, but over there they speak all the languages and even though Charlie was born in the States I figure he probably has a little French.

So I wheel the Frenchie out of there and ten minutes later we are outside the most famous restaurant in the whole of the United States. You guys ever been in there? No? Well, it's something else. Polished mahogany, plum velvet, solid bra.s.s table lamps, seriously elegant. And expensive. More than I can afford. And up comes Charlie D. himself and he knows it. But that's the mark of a great restaurateur, right? Perfect manners, even to a tramp off the street. He bows and asks in what manner he can help. I explain that I have come across this Frenchie over from Paris and that he has a major problem with a letter but I cannot understand what it is.

Well, Mr D. makes a polite enquiry of the Frenchman, in French, and the guy is at it again, going like a Gatling gun and producing his letter. I can't follow a word so I look around. Five tables away is Bet-a-Million Gates going through the menu from the date to the toothpick. Just beyond him is Diamond Jim Brady early-dining with Lillian Russell who has a decolletage decolletage to sink the SS to sink the SS Majestic Majestic. By the by, you know how Diamond Jim eats? I'd been told it but I never believed it; last night I saw it for real. He plants himself in his chair, measures an exact five inches, no more and no less, between his stomach and the table. Then he moves no more, but eats until his belly touches the table.

By this time Charlie D. has finished. He explains to me the Frenchie is a Mon-sewer Armand Dufour, a lawyer from Paris, who has come to New York on a mission of crucial importance. He has to deliver a letter from a dying woman to a certain Mr Erik Muhlheim who may or may not be a resident of New York. He has tried every avenue and come up with a blank. At that point, so do I. Never heard of anybody of that name.

But Charlie is stroking his beard like he is thinking hard, then he says to me: 'Mr Bloom' - real formal - 'have you heard of the E.M. Corporation?'

Now, I ask you, is the Pope Catholic? Of course I've heard of it. Incredibly rich, amazingly powerful and totally secretive. More shares of more pies quoted on the Stock Exchange than anyone barring J. Pierpont Morgan and no-one is richer than J.P. So, not to be outdone, I say: sure, based at the E.M. Tower building on Park Row.

'Right,' says Mr D. 'Well, it may just be that the extremely reclusive personage controlling the E.M. Corporation could be called Mr Muhlheim.' Now when a guy like Charlie Delmonico says 'it may just be' he means he has heard something but you never got it from him. Two minutes later we are back on the street, I hail a pa.s.sing hansom and we are trotting downtown towards Park Row.

Now do you guys see why being a reporter can be the best job in the city? I started trying to help out a Frenchie with a problem and I am facing the chance of seeing the most elusive hermit in New York, the invisible man himself. Do I get to do this? Order up another pint of the golden brew, and I'll tell you.

We arrive at Park Row and drive up to the Tower. And boy, is it tall? It's enormous and its tip is d.a.m.n near in the clouds. All the offices are closed, it's now dark outside but there is one lit-up lobby with a desk and a porter. So I ring the bell. He comes to enquire. I explain. He lets us into the lobby and calls someone on a private telephone. It must be an inside line because he does not ask for any operator. Then he speaks to someone and listens. Then he says we should leave the letter with him and it will be delivered.

Of course, I'm not having any of this. Tell the gentleman upstairs, says I, that Mon-sewer Dufour has come all the way from Paris and is charged to deliver the letter in person. The porter says something like that down the phone, then hands it to me. A voice says: Who is this talking? I say, Charles Bloom, Esquire. And the voice says: What is your mission here?

Now I'm not going to tell the voice that I am from the Hearst Press. I already have the impression that this is a recipe for going straight out the door. So I say I am the a.s.sociate in New York City of Dufour and Partners, notaries of Paris, France. 'And what is your mission here, Mr Bloom?' asks the voice, sounding as if it came straight off the Newfoundland Banks. So I say again that we have to deliver a letter of signal importance into the hands personally of Mr Erik Muhlheim. 'There is no person of that name at this address,' says the voice, 'but if you leave the letter with the porter, I will ensure it reaches its destination.'

Well, I'm not having any of this. It's a lie. I could even be speaking to Mr Invisible for all I know. So I try a bluff. 'Just tell Mr Muhlheim', says I, 'that the letter comes from ...' 'Madame Giry,' says the lawyer. 'Madame Giry,' I repeat down the phone. 'Wait,' says the voice. We wait again. Then he comes back on the line. 'Take the elevator to the thirty-ninth floor.'

We do that. You guys ever been up thirty-nine floors? No? Well, it's an experience. Locked in a cage, the machinery clanking all around you, and you're going up into the sky. And it sways. Eventually the cage stops, I pull the grille to one side and we step out. There's a fellow there, the voice. 'I am Mr Darius,' he says. 'Follow me.'

He takes us into a long, panelled room with a boardroom table set with silver pieces. Clearly this is where the deals are struck, the rivals crushed, the weak brought out, the millions made. It's elegant, Old World style. There are oil-paintings on the walls and I notice one at the far end, higher than the rest. A guy in a wide-brimmed hat, moustache, lace collar, smiling. 'May I see the letter?' says Darius, fixing me with a stare like a cobra sizing up a muskrat for lunch. OK, I've never seen a cobra or a muskrat, but I can imagine. I nod to Dufour and he puts the letter on the polished table between him and Darius. There is something strange about this man that sends the hairs on my neck straight up. He's all in black: black frock-coat, white shirt, black tie. Face as white as the shirt, thin, narrow. Black hair and jet-black eyes that glitter but do not blink. I said cobra? Cobra will do just fine.

Now listen up you guys,. 'cause this is important. I feel the need for a cigarette, so I light up. Mistake, bad move. When the match sputters Darius comes round on me like a knife out of a sheath. 'No naked flame, if you please,' he snaps. 'Extinguish the cigarette.'

Now, I am still standing at the end of the table, near the corner door. Behind me there is a half-moon table against the wall with a silver bowl on it. I walk to it to stub out the b.u.t.t. Behind the silver bowl is a vast silver salver, one edge on the table and the other on the wall so it is tilted at an angle. Just as I stub the cigarette I glance into the salver which is like a mirror. At the far end of the room, high on the wall, the oil-painting of the smiling guy has changed. A face is there, wide-brimmed hat, yes, but beneath that hat is a visage to scare the Rough Riders right out of their saddles.

Under the hat is a kind of mask covering three-quarters of where the face should be. Just showing, half of a crooked gash of a mouth. And behind the mask, two eyes boring into me like drills. I let out a yell and turn around, pointing up at the picture on the wall. 'Who the h.e.l.l's that?' I yell.

'The Laughing Cavalier by Frans Hals,' says Darius. 'Not the original, I fear, which is in London, but very fine copy.' by Frans Hals,' says Darius. 'Not the original, I fear, which is in London, but very fine copy.'

And sure enough, the laughing guy is back, moustache, lace and all. But I am not crazy, I know what I saw. Anyway, Darius reaches out and takes the letter. 'You have my a.s.surance,' he says, 'that within an hour Mr Muhlheim will have his letter.' Then he says the same thing in French to Dufour. The lawyer nods. If he is satisfied there is nothing more I can do. We turn towards the door. Before I can get there, Darius says: 'By the way, Mr Bloom, from which newspaper do you come?' Voice like razor-blades. 'New York American,' I mumble. Then we are gone. Back down to the street, into a cab, back to Broadway. I drop the Frenchie off where he wants to go and head for the city desk. I have a story, right?

Wrong. The Night Editor looks up and says, 'Cholly, you're drunk.' 'I'm whaaaat? I haven't touched a drop,' says I. I tell him my adventure of the evening. Start to finish. What a story, eh? He will have none of it. 'OK,' he says, 'you found a French lawyer with a letter to deliver and you helped him deliver it. Big deal. But no ghosts. I just had a call from the president of the E.M. Corporation, a certain Mr Darius. He says you called this evening, delivered a letter to him personally, lost your head and started shouting about apparitions in the walls. He is grateful for the letter, but threatens to sue if you start casting slurs on his corporation. By the way, the bulls just picked up the Central Park murderer. Caught him in the act. Get down there and help out.'

So not a word was printed. But I tell you guys, I am not crazy and I was not drunk. I really saw that face in the wall. Hey, you are drinking with the only guy in New York who ever actually saw the Phantom of Manhattan.

5.

THE TRANCE OF DARIUS.

THE HOUSE OF HASHISH, LOWER EAST SIDE, MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY, NOVEMBER 1906.

I CAN FEEL THE SMOKE ENTERING ME, SOFT, SEDUCTIVE smoke. Behind closed eyes I can leave this shoddy, shabby slum and walk alone through the gates of perception into the domain of Him whom I serve.

The smoke clears ... the long pa.s.sage floored and walled in solid gold. Oh, the pleasure of the gold. To touch, to caress, to feel, to own. And to bring it to Him, the G.o.d of gold, the only true deity.

Since the Barbary Coast where I first found Him, I a foul catamite elevated to a higher calling, seeking always more gold to bring Him and the smoke to take me to his presence ...

I walk forward into the great golden chamber where the smelters roar and the gilden torrents run fresh and endless from their spigots ... More smoke, the smoke of the smelters mingling with that in my mouth, my throat, my blood, my brain. And out of that smoke He will speak to me as ever ...

He will listen to me, advise and counsel me and as always He will be right ... He is here now, I can feel His presence ... 'Master, great G.o.d Mammon, I am on my knees before you. I have served you as best I have been able these many years and have brought to your throne my earthly employer and all his stupendous wealth. I beg you to hear me, for I need your advice and help.'

'I hear you, Servant. What is your trouble?'

'That man whom I serve here below ... something seems to have entered him that I cannot comprehend.'

'Explain.'

'Ever since I have known him, ever since I first cast my eyes on that hideous face, he has had but one obsession. Which I have encouraged and fostered at every stage. In a world that he perceives as being uniformly hostile to him, he has only ever wanted to succeed. It was I who channelled that obsession into the making of money and ever more money and thus brought him to your service. Is it not so?'

'You have done brilliantly, Servant. Every day his wealth increases and you ensure that it is dedicated to my service.'

'But recently, Master, he has increasingly become obsessed with another concern. Time-wasting but worse, much worse, a waste of money. He thinks only of opera. There is no profit in opera.'

'This I know. A fruitless irrelevance. How much of his fortune does he devote to this fetish?'

'So far, but a tiny fraction. My fear is that it distracts him from dedication to the increase of your empire of gold.'

'Does he cease to make money?'

'On the contrary. In that area things are as they have always been. The original ideas, the great strategies, the extraordinary ingenuity which sometimes seems to me like a second sight, these he still has. I still preside over the meetings in the boardroom. It is I who, for the world, conduct the great takeovers, construct an ever bigger empire of mergers and investments. It is I who destroy the weak and the helpless, rejoicing in their pleas. It is I who raise the rents in the slum tenements, order the clearances of the homes and schools for factories and marshalling yards. It is I who suborn and bribe the city officials to ensure their complaisance. It is I who sign the purchase orders for great stakes of shares and blocks of stock in the rising industries across the country. But always the instructions are his, the campaign planned by him, the things I must do and say devised by him.'

'And is his judgement starting to fail him?'

'No, Master. It is as faultless as ever. The Stock Exchange is agape at his audacity and foresight, even though they think it is mine.'

'Then what is the problem, Servant?'

'I am wondering, Master, if the moment has come for him to depart and for me to inherit.'

'Servant, you have done brilliantly, but because you have also followed my orders. You are talented, it is true, and you have always known this, and loyal only to me. But Erik Muhlheim is more. Rarely does one come across a true genius in the matter of gold. He is such a one, and more besides. Inspired only by hatred of Man, guided by you in my service, he is not simply a wealth-creating genius but immune to scruple, principle, mercy, pity, compa.s.sion and most important of all, like you, immune to love. A human tool to dream of. One day his moment will indeed come and I may order you to end his life. So that you may inherit, of course. All the kingdoms of the world was the phrase I used once, to another. To you, all the financial empire of America. Have I deceived you so far?'

'Never, Master.'

'And have you betrayed me?'

'Never, Master.'

'Then so be it. Let it continue a while. Tell me more of this new obsession, and the why of it.'

'His library shelves have always been loaded with the works of opera and books concerning it. But when I arranged that he could never have a private box, screened by curtains to hide his face, at the Metropolitan he seemed to lose interest. Now he has invested millions in a rival opera house.'

'So far he has always recouped his investments and more.'

'True, but this venture is a certain loss-maker, even though such losses must be under one per cent of his total wealth. And there is more. His mood has changed.'