Onyx (18 page)

“First, you must never for any reason contact my client.”

“At the risk of sounding moronic, I don't understand.”

“It's quite simple. My client doesn't wish to be involved.”

“Agreed. No contact.” Hugh shook his head. “We've had teams of attorneys here and in Europe. How could such important patents have been missed?”

“They were missed because they were never filed. I was given orders not to file.”

Hugh nodded. “Who was the inventor?”

Polhemus did not answer the question. “The plans, never having been filed, have no legal validity. They cannot supersede the Selden patent.”

“I understand that. But I'm sure
you
understand just how important this evidence could be to our appeal,” Hugh said, and repeated, “Who was the inventor?”

“They were to be filed in the name of Andrew Stuart.”

The words sank as if into a nest of cotton. A thick, smothering silence that made breathing difficult. The left telephone rang, and the lawyer glanced expectantly at it then at Hugh. There was no further ring: the house had been installed with elaborate wiring that enabled the secretaries in their office to answer any ring. Hugh finally spoke. “He gave them to you?”

“He came to Washington with various drawings in the years between 1895 and 1899. After that he never communicated with me. And now he never will.”

Hugh interrupted. “The Major's dead?”

“A year ago last August.”

The scar tissue appeared to darken as the right side of Hugh's face paled. A shock rushed through him, catching at his lungs, a paroxysm that strained his chest muscles, drawing raspy coughs. To hide his distress he pushed to his feet, moving to the filing cabinets that were built into the wall and skillfully veneered with the same antique oak as the paneling. The dark old wood blurred in front of his eyes.
No
, he thought,
no. He can't be dead. I won't have him dead. It's not fair
. Hugh had spent countless hours planning methods of revenge, bankrupting the Major, paying one of the servants to administer tormenting drugs of slow-acting poison, not the usual puffed-hot fantasies but carefully worked-out means. He had held back not out of moral nicety but out of fear he wasn't yet powerful enough. A grieving fury chilled him, and he coughed into his handkerchief.

“Mr. Bridger, can I help you?”

“Asthma,” Hugh gasped. When he was able to speak, he asked, “Who is your client, then?”

“Major Stuart's niece, his heiress.”

Antonia
? Hugh ricocheted through a decade into that cold morning when, in pain but not yet aware of his full torment, he had awoken to hear Tom's fury gusting like the wind and Antonia's soft replies. Tom never mentioned her name, but Tom had become Hugh's life, and he was fully aware that though his brother cared warmly for Maud, his capacity for romantic love was locked with Antonia in the dungeon of the past. Tom's calumnies must have stabbed her as deeply as he had pierced himself. Ten years of silence, and then this help? What did it mean? Hugh took a deep, wheezing breath. “Isn't she aware what she has? I'd pay, and so would the Selden people. A fortune, conservatively.”

“I advised her of the value.” Again Mitchell Polhemus made that rusty smile of warmth. “A most unusual lady. She's convinced that the plans belonged neither to her uncle nor herself.”

Hugh sat down again. “Mr. Polhemus, you said there was a second condition.”

“That Thomas Bridger never learn the plans came through her.”

So Tom was no careless memory to her. “The Major steals Tom's brainchildren, the niece returns them. How am I meant to hide that?”

“Your reputation, Mr. Bridger, your reputation. I've heard that you're singularly brilliant at unearthing information.”

The remark was intended as a compliment, and normally Hugh would have accepted it as that. But in the throes of his peculiar subverted grief for the Major, beset by old questions, attempting to fight off an asthma attack, he asked himself how it was that he who had spent his years advancing Tom, he who was desirous only of his brother's good, had earned a reputation as Tom's dark angel, a snoop. “I won't tell him.”

“I have your word?”

“I'll obey both of the lady's conditions.”

“There's a crate filled with the papers. My chief clerk himself will bring them to Detroit.”

Hugh saw his visitor to the front door, then rushed up to his rooms. His black valet, medically trained, administered a soothing hypodermic.

IV

He was completely recovered by seven thirty. The family was invited to dinner, and Hugh—tall, slim, elegant in his evening clothes, his new diamond studs glinting—awaited them in the drawing room. The high, interlaced wood ceiling had been inspired by Knole in England, plushy red velvet curtains covered numerous leaded windows, the paintings were softly wrinkled with age, the bowls of chrysanthemums aromatic, the needlepoint sofas many. All in all the setting for large, convivial groups. Hugh recalled his youthful dreams of lavish entertaining.
My social life turned out simple, thanks to the deceased Major
, he thought, his hand shaking a little as he inserted a black Sobranie into an amber holder, then the favorable comparison of the size and aristocratic harmony of this house to the chateau on Woodward restored his satisfaction.

Rain hushed the purr of the Trelinacks' Daimler, and the first Hugh knew of their arrival was the sound of the butler opening the front door.

Trelinack's powerful muscles had slackened to fat, and his cheerful face blossomed an alarming purple over his tight wing collar. When he had suffered his heart attack two years earlier, he had begged Tom to buy him out. Tom had paid him four times what he asked, and now the Cousin Jack was an unlikely millionaire. Mrs. Trelinack's thick hair was completely white, her royal-blue satin bosom adorned by a sapphire and diamond necklace, yet despite these changes she retained that fresh look of recently having bathed herself in a farmhouse copper tub.

Greeting anyone, even these kindly, simple old people, made Hugh a trifle uneasy, and he gulped down the sherry his English butler offered. Rogers and Yssy Sinclair arrived next. They had four sons and Yssy was pregnant again. Rogers towered over his plump little wife, a beefy man with the broad smile of a successful salesman. Melisande and Olaf Baardson swept up in their Pierce-Arrow. Olaf, Norwegian born, a handsome six four, had been Tom's first pattern-maker, though whenever this was mentioned, Melisande changed the subject. They had one child, and Melisande insisted that it was for this quiet, pale little girl's future rather than her own social aspirations that she endured the rigors of summering in Newport.

Rogers was in charge of sales, Olaf superintendent of the Rock Avenue plant, and the two began talking Onyx. Mrs. Trelinack, Yssy, and Melisande discussed the doings of the children while Trelinack, confused by his retired status, bumbled between the men and women like a big bee lost from its hive. Hugh, as was his habit, watched from the depths of his wing chair, aware of the glancing around, the air of incompletion, as though the evening were not yet begun.

It was nearly eight, the inviolable dinner hour, when into the sound of rain came the putt-pop barking of a Fiver. The women patted their fur-trimmed dinner gowns, Rogers and Olaf straightened, on the ready to rise, and Trelinack, already on his feet, was all but standing at attention. The involuntary respect made Hugh smile. Yet he himself was hurrying to the door to meet the latecomers.

Tom's brown hair had a premature sprinkle of white, and the lines of his mordant smile were deep cut around his eyes and mouth. Maud was still handsome, but her frank chestnut-brown eyes were permanently magnified by the gold-rimmed spectacles that she now needed full time. The decade, however, had pressed more lightly on their appearances than those of the others.
They don't need to change
, Hugh had once decided,
the world recognizes their invisible crowns
. Recently, however, he had modified this opinion. Tom and Maud Bridger were formed of incorruptible elements that neither money nor power nor time could corrode.

Clinging to Tom's hand was Caryll.

Amid the adults the child looked very small, younger than his age, which was six. His starched collar extended over the lapels of his Norfolk jacket, his black stockings were pulled neatly under his short trousers, a lovingly turned-out child who resembled both parents. Tom's gray eyes shone in Maud's round face.

“Well, Caryll,” Hugh said.

Hesitatingly, the child came to him, giving him a peck on the right cheek, a timid kiss. His uncle would have empathized with the boy's shyness—had it not extended to himself. Hugh's shrewdness about human motives had one dangerous blind spot. He attributed every reaction he aroused to his maroon disfigurement.
Why do they have to drag the child everywhere
? he thought irritably, and without realizing it, grimaced.

Caryll pulled away. “Uncle Hugh,” he mumbled. “I made you something.”

“That was good of you, Caryll.”

“I put it with Mother's present,” Caryll said, retreating to Tom, who took him on his lap.

V

Hugh had seated Maud to his right, and over the bluepoints, he said, “Caryll mentioned making me a present.”

“He found a photograph of five camels and a Fiver on the Sahara Desert, and it tickled him. He cut it out of the magazine and glued it on cardboard. I left it on the hall table with some books I've finished.”

“That's very kind of you both,” he said.
With all her money
, he thought,
she could buy me new ones. She's as tight as ever
. Yet he was also recognizing that he would enjoy her used books: Maud read voraciously and passed on to him what most pleased her.

Hugh tried, unsuccessfully, to rouse some lively talk as the family ate their way through the oysters, rich and dark terrapin soup, lobster basket, saddle of lamb with chestnut puree and asparagus that were delicate white because Hugh's gardeners had piled earth around their growing spears, a salad of grapefruit and oranges shipped by train from a special grove near Riverside in California, blue raspberries, a snowy mountain of vanilla mousse. The two parlor maids served the food while Larkin poured Château Latour, Moët & Chandon brut, Clos de Vougeot.

The women returned to the drawing room. Caryll drowsing in his grandmother's arms where he had been since the lamb.

Hugh, host extraordinaire, pressed cigars and brandy on the men before saying to his brother, “Could you come into my office for a minute. There's something I want to show you.”

The two crossed the hall, and Tom dropped into the chair opposite the Elizabethan table. “What a day,” he sighed. Even in weariness there was a tension, a vitality to the lean body. “At four this morning I got a call from the Hamtramck”—he was completing a vast new factory complex in this township, an enclave of Polish labor surrounded by Detroit—“that the new radiator conveyor belt had broken down. Christ! I want it to be right before I go to England.”

“I had a visitor this afternoon.”

“You?”

“Mitchell Polhemus came to see me.”

Tom jerked straight. “
Polhemus
? He came all the way to Detroit? What did he want? To tell us to lie down and die?”

“As a matter of fact he's on to something that should help us.”

“Come off it, Hugh. I'm too tired for your games.”

“During most of the '90s a client sent him automotive blueprints. None were filed, but they'd be an enormous boost to our side.”

“How do we get them?”

“Polhemus says they belong to you.”

“Me?” The gray eyes narrowed, the jaw clenched shut in a piercing expression that caused Onyx executives to shiver. “You're telling me that the Major stole my inventions?”

“A kinder word is borrowed,” Hugh said sourly.

“He knew I despised patents! So he filed them himself, the lying, thieving, arsonist old prick!”

“We can have the blueprints on one condition.”

“Well?”

“We must never contact Polhemus's client.”

“
That
,” Tom snorted, “he has my word on.”

Hugh felt the warmth of a well-maneuvered victory. “So at last we have something to impress the Appeals Circuit. Now go on home and get some sleep.”

VI

The house, like the others lining Chandler Avenue, was red brick with a square patch of lawn. A green tile roof peaked above the second floor with its three bedrooms and the one bathroom that the three Bridgers shared with the French-Canadian hired girl. The rest of the family, embarrassed that their new homes were far more opulent, grumbled out of Tom and Maud's earshot that the couple owed it to Onyx not to live so humbly. Maud, though, had gotten a bargain in this sturdy house, and Tom had turned the stable into a satisfactory garage. Neither considered moving.

Tom went to put away the Fiver. After he had pushed the garage doors shut, he stared up at the sky. The rain had stopped an hour ago, and the half-moon rode between filmy, silvery clouds, a cold, sharply romantic night when the opaque shadows were haunting mysteries. Tom's brief spurt of rage at the Major's perfidy had evaporated, and he was left, inevitably, with Antonia. His mind hazed, for how can one remember ecstasy or pain? He could no longer swear whether she had been lovely or too thin with odd features, for with the years she had become less of a person than textures, a swiftly eager movement, the silken feel of inner thigh, the sound of irrepressible laughter, the shiver of joy on his skin.

Wet lilacs spread their perfume, so sweet that tears came into his eyes.
Antonia
… Was there any regret like the regret for a lost world?

“Tom?” his wife called from an upstairs window.

“Here, honey.”