Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (213 page)

“Mackinnon,” he said, “was my father’s chief agent in London. He holds the secret cipher book. The man who sent it — Maginnis — is an Irishman. He’s — so they say — my father’s
âme damnée
— as remarkable a man as my father. At the head of
all
the combination. So that he speaks with the weight of about six hundred firms, there and here....”

She interrupted him with: “Is this possible?”

“That my father controlled six hundred firms? Why,” he said, “I don’t know that the figure’s an exactly round number, but...”

She interrupted him again, a little impatiently: “Oh!
— that’s
possible. But that your father should...” and she pointed her white, little finger at the line of a paper.

“Oh! —
that
he said,” that’s entirely likely. You may take it for gospel truth.”

“What a huge sum the cable must have cost!” she said as a side issue.

“You’ve got to revise all your ideas,” he answered. “The cable may have cost a hundred pounds. But that’s not even a drop in the bucket compared with what’s always at stake. Why, this combination handles — I don’t know — a million dollars a day! I don’t know. I don’t suppose they know themselves — that anybody ever
could
know — because the circumstances of the businesses are so vast and change so rapidly that everything might be something else before you could possibly calculate where you stood at any given hour.”

She dropped the consideration with:

“It makes one feel giddy.”

And he with: “Yes, it’s like trying to think what would become of you if you fell overboard in mid-Atlantic. The depths are bottomless.”

They returned to the consideration of the cable, when she said:

“But which are we to believe? That your father died because the medicine he took was not properly made up, or because he was drugging himself to look ill for the sake of deceiving the reporters?”

He removed the hand that held her disengaged fingers to touch his moustache, a gesture that aided his reflections.

“You can believe either,” he said. “Or both. Or nothing. Or even something quite different.”

Her dark eyes rested for a moment upon him, affectionately, seeking further explanation, and he added:

“My father certainly suffered from
angina pectoris.
He certainly took nitrate of amyl for it. And a chemist over there is equally capable of giving him capsules without any nitrate of amyl in them. No doubt, if the truth came to be known, the chemist’s shop was owned by one of my father’s own combinations. In that case they’d certainly have had instructions to run the business as economically as possible. And nitrate of amyl costs money. In that case, not even a man as rich as my father could have got the stuff pure. No one could in the whole continent.”

He considered again for a moment.

“But the whole thing with its ramifications is so infinite that it makes one tired. Why, it doesn’t even begin to end there. The capsules my father took may really have been perfectly all right. He may just have died. The whole story may be a lie. But his combination may be now intent on forming a combine of drug stores. They may want to raise a storm of indignation against druggists and then to buy up all the drug stores in America at cheap rates because of the discredit.”

“What a frightful people!” she said.

“Oh!” he answered, “don’t believe that they’re frightful. The only wonderful thing is that we’re only just beginning to understand such manoeuvres.

They’ve been going on everywhere and always. What’s hopeful is that now we’re beginning to understand the method we shall arrive at a means of fighting it soon.”

She did not answer that, but returned to her paper.

“But why should your father have wanted to make himself appear ill?”

“Oh,” he answered, “that’s simple. It’s the only simple thing in the business — because, you see, it’s the only place in which a human figure stands alone and is visible. All the rest is combines and numerals. This is a human dodge. It would be just like my father — who always was fond of a joke.” He reflected again for a moment.

“You’ve got to think that my father really was a striking man. My mother, of course, taught me to dislike his — his methods so much that I’ve shrunk from talking about him much, even to you.”

“Yes,” she answered, “I’ve learnt a great deal more of him from the papers than I ever heard from you.”

He patted her hand deprecatingly.

“Well, don’t bear a grudge against me for that,” he said. “I sort of hoped that I should never have to talk to you about him. And the papers — Heaven knows! — always had enough in them about him for you to learn all you could possibly want to know — for the purpose of marrying me.”

“You mean,” she said, “that you never expected to be him — as you are now.”

He smiled a little wearily and then kissed her.

“Never,” he answered, and then: “But of course I’m not the man my father was. All the same....” and he straightened himself by pulling at the back seam of his coat,” I’m going to stand up against him now. I’m going to fight the influence he’s left on the world.”

She considered this announcement for long enough to rejoin:

“It almost seems a pity!”

He returned to his parable.

“You see: my mother, for all she was only a lady’s-maid when he married her, was as English as you — or your friend the Canon’s wife, or your father for that matter. She just hated his ‘American methods’ as much as ever your father could. I expect it was as much that as the ‘Thing,’ whatever it was, that my father had done that made her hate him so terribly.”

She paused before she asked him:

“What
was
the thing your father did?”

He shook his head and answered:

“I don’t know. As I’ve told you two or three times, there was something. But my mother never told me. She had a sort of loyalty to my father after all. It may have been murder....”

“It hadn’t anything to do with another woman?” she asked.

“Oh, dear no,” he answered, “my mother had too much knowledge of life to expect my father to be faithful to her. No: it
may
have been murder — my mother would not have liked murder. But I think it had to do with my father’s having been disloyal to a friend. Once or twice before she died she spoke of a man called Kratzenstein. I think my father stole a mine from him. Something like that. My mother, you see, would not have been able to stand — she would not have been able to
understand
— that sort of crime.”

Eleanor commented: “Ah!”

“But my father,” he continued, “my father, I imagine, would have considered it a good — or sardonic — joke to rob a man who trusted him. Probably Kratzenstein was robbing someone else already... you can’t tell.”—’

She scratched her cheek reflectively.

“I think I understand your mother’s standpoint,” she said.

“Oh my father’s is absolutely simple,” he answered. “What he wanted was fun. If he diddled Kratzenstein it was for the pure fun of diddling. If he’s made the largest fortune in the world it was for the same reason. If he tried to make himself appear ill to the reporters, that was because it was a lark. No doubt the lark’s only huger if he actually killed himself over it. I wouldn’t mind betting that if he’s left his fortune to me it was because he saw it would be a tremendous bother to me. He was not the type of man who’d want to found a dynasty. I guess he thought I was a terrific prig.”

“I think I’m rather glad he did,” Eleanor answered.

He meditated upon the point as if he were not quite certain.

“I think my mother was glad of that too. You see, she hadn’t a sense of humour. I fancy my father thought she was a prig too. He used to be amused at her — and at me. I suppose I
haven’t
any sense of humour.”

“I’m glad of that too,” she said softly. She considered once more.

“I’m sometimes sorry, in a sneaking way,” he said. “It makes me seem less of a man.”

She said, with a little wounded intonation:

“Then you don’t care what I care!”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” he said, “don’t say that. If I did not care what you cared should I be here consulting you?”

In a swift access of tenderness she put her cheek against his.

“You dear!” she said in soft tones of emotion. Then she drew back and looked into his eyes from quite close. “At the same time I don’t see what we’re consulting
about
.”

He knelt down suddenly and kissed first one foot and then the other, that she held a little out as if to a shoe-black, pulling her skirt a little back and peering over.

“We are not consulting about
things
,” he said, from his knees, “we’re getting to know each other better and better. We’re consulting about our points of view.” As he knelt she put her hand upon his head. “That’s why we can’t keep to any straight line,” he concluded.

“At the same time,” she said, “we ought to talk about something. There seems to be such a tremendous lot to
do.”

“Oh — to
do”
he said, with a touch of deprecation. “The only thing to do is for me to show you how I worship you.”

“That is very American, isn’t it?” she asked, as if she were inclined to take advantage of both people’s traits. He was to behave like a European and to be as devoted as the Transatlantic is supposed to be. He rose, however, to his feet.

“Yes, I suppose we’ve got to settle on some line of action,” he said. “Where are we?” He took a little pencil from his waistcoat pocket and ran it through the hair above his brows.

“I have not ascertained a single thing,” she said. “Not one that’s definite. Here’s this telegram? Who is it from? What does it really mean? What are you going to do?”

“I’ll write that down,” he said, and when he had taken from his pocket an old envelope he jotted down upon his knee the three headings. “We need,” he concluded, “some sort of anchor to hold us to the ground.”

He took from her the copy of the deciphered cable and tapped it with the back of his pencil.

“Where does it come from?” he quoted. “New York. And from Patrick C. Maginnis. That’s fairly certain, because it was sent in a code that
only
Maginnis uses. My father, even, was not acquainted with it. That was their safeguard. Maginnis, in the combine, represented the heads of businesses who were not my father. That settles where it comes from.” He wrinkled his brows. “Now, as for
what
it means?” He reflected for a moment. “Let’s read the cable word for word.” She nodded and he went on: “‘
John Collar Kelleg died on Sunday at
4.30
in
the afternoon.”
There’s a definite statement. It
may
be a lie. My father
may
have got Maginnis to cable it for his own purposes.”

“
What
sort of purposes?” she asked.

“Well,” he answered, “consider the rest of the cable.” He cleared his throat and read further. “‘
It is urgent that this news be authoritatively denied and re-affirmed in all London papers until after Monday, when associates of all the Kelleg interests will meet and determine on plan
.’ That may be true: it may be a dodge.” He read on again. “‘
Use all your influence with advertising staffs of London journals to give the matter prominence.’”

He drew in a deep breath.

“Now, there’s a pretty straight proposition at last,” he said.

She moved her hand across her dark eyebrows.