Railroad Page 11

  Collis stood up too. ‘How long will it take you to make up your mind?’ he asked, trying not to sound bitter.

  ‘A day or two. I’d like to speak to some of my brokers first, and George Spooner.’

  ‘Do you have to do that? If the Spooner family think that I’m going to go broke –’

  Senator Stride gave Collis a plain home-baked look that meant, ‘You’ve come to me with your cap in your hand, son. Don’t start laying down conditions.’

  He said quietly, ‘George Spooner has to know. If I. P. Woolmer’s goes down, then Ohio Life is going to be threatened, too. Ohio Life does a whole lot of its banking through Woolmer’s.’

  ‘I’ve asked you this favour in confidence, Senator Stride. I don’t want Mr Spooner to know. Not until it’s all settled.’

  ‘Mr Edmonds,’ warned the Senator, ‘you’d better understand that when you’re down in the ditch, anyone can call you Shorty. I won’t even think about underwriting your father’s mistakes unless I’ve discussed it with George Spooner first, and if I don’t underwrite them because you don’t want George Spooner to know, then you’re stuck anyway.’

  ‘Then I think I’d better go someplace else.’

  ‘I’ll still tell George what’s happened, whether you go someplace else or not. He’s an old, old friend of mine, Mr Edmonds, and your father’s horsing around with railroad stocks has put his business at risk.’

  ‘Is that how much I can trust a Southern Democrat?’

  ‘It’s how much George Spooner can trust a Southern Democrat. If I was your friend, wouldn’t you expect me to do the same?’

  Collis sat on the arm of one of the smoking-room chairs and rubbed his eyes. The idea of asking Senator Stride to underwrite I. P. Woolmer’s had seemed so simple when he had thought about it over the weekend. But now, nightmarishly, it looked as if the price of saving his father was going to be losing Delphine. He couldn’t imagine that the Spooners would allow her to marry a young man whose family had been within a cat’s whisker of ignominious bankruptcy. He finished his whisky, and then felt it rise again in the back of his throat. It was Monday evening, and out on the street below he could hear a vendor call out: ‘Pineapples, fresh pineapples! Come and buy your lovely pineapples!’

  ‘All right,’ said Collis. ‘If you have to speak to Mr Spooner, you have to. But please let me know as soon as you can.’

  ‘Oh, I shall assuredly do that,’ replied Senator Stride. And, for the first time that evening, he smiled.

  Just before eleven o’clock the following morning, Angus the butler came up to Collis’s rooms and announced that there was a man to see him in the front room. He had been writing a letter to an old schoolmate of his who had gone to St Louis and made a modest fortune in lumber. He had put down his pen and was rereading what he had written while Angus hovered at the door. Then he crumpled up the sheet of writing paper, and tossed it over his shoulder.

  Angus, grey-haired, like a jowly old dog in wire-rimmed spectacles, creaked ahead of him down the stairs and along the corridor and opened the front-room doors for him. From the sound of it, he wore absolutely ferocious stays.

  Collis paused in the hallway and lit up a small corona before he entered. He decided he was probably smoking too much; but then, the way things were, he needed some way of settling his nerves. The front room was small and gloomy and decorated in reds and golds, and in a chair by the window he could see the wavy hair of a man who was sitting with his back to Collis, trying to read a copy of the Herald by the opal-coloured light that was sieved through the curtains. Collis stood by the door, puffing at his cigar to get it going, and trying to think who on earth this was.

  After a few moments, the man turned around; he came across the room with his hand out and a satisfied smile on his face. He was, to Collis’s complete disgust, none other than the wheat-complexioned manager of the Madison Saloon, in a loud check suit and tan gloves, and reeking of lavender water.

  Collis declined to shake hands. ‘Who let you in here?’ he said.

  ‘Your butler, sir.’ The man grinned. ‘He used to work in premises of mine, a good while back.’

  ‘Angus? I was under the impression he’d been in service all his life.’

  ‘No, sir. In his youth he was one of the best dealers in town. He went by the name of Shaker in those days.’

  ‘Well, you surprise me,’ said Collis. ‘You also annoy me. I thought I’d already paid you off, both for your damned glassware and your silence. And you might as well know that I don’t intend to patronise your swinepit of a saloon ever again.’

  ‘There are still enough swine left to give me a reasonable living,’ said the manager, still grinning, and showing teeth the colour of old varnished pine.

  ‘Then what do you want?’ demanded Collis.

  ‘A glass of Madeira wine wouldn’t go down too badly,’ the manager suggested.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Of course, Mr Edmonds. I’m more than serious. I’m distraught. In fact, I was so upset when I heard what had happened that I came around here straight away by cab to offer you my commiserations.’

  ‘Commiserations? What for?’

  The manager raised one of his wheaty eyebrows. ‘I thought you might have heard.’

  ‘Heard what? If you don’t stop playing games with me, I’ll kick you out of the house.’

  ‘It’s the young lady, sir,’ said the manager. ‘The young lady who fell from the parapet. She’s passed on.’

  Collis stared at the man through the smoke of his cigar. He felt giddy, as if he had been spinning around and around, and had suddenly stood still. He went to the carved and polished sideboard and picked up a small silver handbell, which he rang, his eyes still on the wheat-coloured manager, his cigar still smouldering between his teeth.

  ‘I see,’ said Collis. ‘I suppose you’d better sit down.’

  ‘I’m all right standing, thank you.’ The manager smiled.

  At that moment, Angus creaked in. He glanced at the manager and tried hard not to look as if he knew him; then he came over to Collis and said, ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘We’d like a Madeira wine, please, Shaker,’ Collis said, ‘and a glass of dry sherry.’

  ‘Shaker, sir?’

  ‘It’s all right. Our friend from the Madison here told me something about your past. It’s no disgrace. In fact, if you’re that good, you might come up to my rooms one night and we’ll play a couple of hands.’

  Angus coughed. ‘Thank you, sir. A Madeira wine and a fino.’

  When he was gone, Collis turned back to the manager. ‘Suppose you tell me just what it is you’re looking for,’ he said. ‘I’m not the kind of man who likes to thrash around the bushes.’

  ‘Well,’ said the manager, feigning embarrassment, ‘what I really wanted was some species of agreement. You know the sort of thing I mean. You do me a favour, as it were, and I’ll do you a favour in return.’

  Collis smoked, and nodded. ‘I know the sort of thing you mean. It’s usually called blackmail.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said the manager. ‘It’s nothing like that. Blackmail is when somebody’s guilty, and someone else agrees to keep the secret quiet for a price. But I know that you’re innocent. All I’m doing is asking for a donation in order to keep my memory in good working order. If you like, I’m looking for a contribution to mental science.’

  ‘How much?’ asked Collis bluntly.

  The manager shrugged. ‘How much is it worth to you to stay out of the courts? You see, now that she’s dead, the police are going to have to do something about it, even if it’s only to file a report that she died by happenstance. It would be most unfortunate if they decided you pushed her off that parapet on purpose.’

  Collis thrust his hands in his pockets. ‘Now why should I have wanted to do something like that? There’s no motive, you see. That’s where your story falls down.’

  The wheat-coloured manager beamed. ‘It depends if I can remember you shouting at her befor
e she fell, or not.’

  ‘Shouting at her?’

  ‘That’s right. It could be that I heard you calling her a slut, and a she-devil, and generally expressing your annoyance because she was teasing you for certain disabilities.’

  ‘Are you crazy? I ought to punch you in the nose.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that. It would be much better, all around, if you didn’t. We don’t want the police to think you’re a naturally violent man, do we? Not a man who’s easily aroused to punching people, or pushing them off parapets.’

  Angus appeared at the door with the drinks on a small tray. The two men remained silent while he handed the manager his Madeira and then shuffled across to Collis with his sherry. He sniffed once and left, leaving the door slightly ajar. Collis called, ‘Door, Shaker!’ and after a slight pause it was closed, with a click.

  ‘I drink to your health,’ said the manager, raising his glass.

  Collis ignored him. ‘Just tell me how much you want,’ he said. ‘I’m not in the mood for social pleasantries.’

  ‘Well,’ said the manager, with the air of a man trying to decide the price of a reasonable horse, ‘I’d say that five hundred dollars should settle it.’

  ‘Five hundred dollars? Are you out of your mind?’

  ‘Not that I know of. You have to look at the price objectively, if you see what I mean. At the moment, you’re free, and you’re walking around at your liberty, and so five hundred dollars seems like a lot. But imagine if you were locked up in a police cell. Imagine being incarcerated with a rabble of felons and drunkards. Five hundred dollars would seem a very small price to pay for your freedom then.’

  ‘It’s too much. I didn’t kill the girl, and that’s all there is to it. I’m not paying five hundred dollars to a scalawag like you to protect myself from the consequences of a crime I didn’t commit.’

  ‘You have forty-eight hours to think about it.’ The manager smiled.

  ‘Don’t you give me deadlines,’ warned Collis. ‘I’m not paying your damned blackmail now, nor in forty-eight hours, nor ever.’

  The manager sipped his Madeira. ‘I’m sorry to hear you say that,’ he said. ‘It could have been a most amicable arrangement for both of us. Most amicable.’

  Collis took a quick, angry breath. ‘The most amicable thing you can do right now is leave,’ he told the manager.

  There was a pause. The manager finished his Madeira and laid the glass neatly on the sideboard. He thought for a moment and then looked up at Collis with a cajoling, almost friendly expression.

  ‘You’re sure I can’t persuade you to change your mind?’

  ‘Out,’ Collis said.

  ‘Very well.’ The manager nodded. ‘I’m sorry to hear you talk that way, but if you feel you can’t accommodate me, what more can I do? I’ll be around in forty-eight hours in any event, to see if you’ve decided to pay. I’ll bring my two friends from Chatham Square, too, if you’d care to meet them again.’

  Collis seized the manager by the sleeve and pulled him roughly towards the door while the manager cried, ‘Here! Here! Steady, Mr Edmonds!’ But Collis was too furious to stop. He wrenched open the door and shoved the manager out into the hallway. Then he stalked out after him and pushed him again, so that the man fell against the hall-stand and was showered in derbies and silk hats.

  ‘Out!’ shouted Collis. ‘Out!’

  He opened the heavy front door and manhandled the manager on to the front step. Angus, aroused by the noise and the commotion, hurried along the hallway as fast as his corsetry would permit, but he was too late to prevent Collis from kicking the manager right in the seat of his pants, so that the man howled in pain and staggered down the five marble steps to the street clutching his backside.

  ‘Don’t come back!’ yelled Collis. ‘Not you, nor your boxers, nor anybody to do with you!’

  ‘I warn you!’ shouted the manager. He was crimson in the face now, and just as angry as Collis.

  ‘Warn all you damn well want!’ Collis told him. ‘Just make sure you don’t try to set foot in this house again!’

  Angus, his eyeglasses perched precariously on the end of his nose, stood beside Collis and watched the manager limp to the corner of Gramercy Park and wave for a cab. Outside, it was a warm, dusty day, and a girl in a carriage gave Collis a saucy glance from under her parasol as she and her unimpressible-looking mother rolled by. Collis didn’t, and couldn’t, take any notice. As he turned away from the open door and walked back across the hallway, he began to understand how much his life had changed in just a few days. A couple of weeks ago, he would have called at once for his horse and contrived to gallop around the block so that he could raise his hat to a girl as pretty as that, and beg her mother for an introduction.

  He drew hard at his cigar to rekindle it. Behind him, Angus closed the front door and came shuffling back, shaking his head.

  ‘You look distinctly unhappy,’ said Collis.

  Angus nodded. ‘Every right to be, sir. Not for my own sake, mind you. But I’ve known that fellow for more than twenty years. I worked in one of his gaming rooms from ’32 to ’39, and I can tell you straight out that he’s one of the hardest nuts in the business. Not a man to cross, sir. Not if you fancy a nose to breathe through.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Carpenter, sir. Herbert Carpenter. Not a man to cross, by any means.’

  ‘I see,’ said Collis, with a sigh of fatigue.

  Makepeace came home from Wall Street at seven o’clock, when the sun was beginning to sink into the grainy skies over New Jersey. Collis had heard his carriage draw up outside, and he stood by an upstairs window looking down on his father’s rounded shoulders and the top of his black silk hat as the old man was helped down to the sidewalk. He could see by his father’s defeated demeanour that no miracles had happened during the day to rescue him from his creditors. He let the diamond-patterned lace curtain fall back into place, and the street outside was veiled in white.

  He stood at the head of the stairs as Makepeace came in through the front door, handed his hat and his cane to Angus, and then took out his big white handkerchief and wiped his perspiring forehead. It was still warm and dusty out on the streets.

  ‘Father,’ said Collis quietly.

  Makepeace looked up. ‘Oh, you’re there.’

  ‘Yes. Is there any news?’

  Makepeace shrugged. ‘It depends what kind of news you mean. There’s plenty of bad news. Plenty of that. But not much good news at all.’

  Collis descended the stairs and came across the hallway. When he saw his father close to, he suddenly appreciated how much this financial disaster had taken out of him. He looked bloated with illness instead of puffed up with pride, and somehow his formal business clothes seemed ill-fitting and incongruous. He smelled of brandy, and Collis guessed that he must have stopped off at the club on the way home to fortify himself after the day’s despair.

  ‘Is there no hope at all?’ asked Collis.

  Makepeace shook his head. ‘It’s almost impossible. The problem is, I have to keep it quiet. I can’t tell anybody what I need the money for. And even the wildest speculator won’t underwrite me for two million dollars without having some kind of inkling what he’s supposed to guarantee, and why.’

  Collis looked at his father sadly for a moment. ‘Don’t you have any old friends you can turn to? Somebody who owes you a favour? Not after all these years on Wall Street?’

  Makepeace raised his head and smiled. ‘You’d be surprised how many so-called friendships are dependent on one’s solvency. When you’re a beggar, my boy, they don’t want to know you any more. I talked to three friends of mine at three separate trusts, and none of them would entertain the smallest loan, not even twenty dollars, without papers and guarantees and full details of what I was going to use it for. On Wall Street, your friendships are only as wide as your wallet.’

  Collis wondered whether it was time to tell his father about Senator Stride, but
he decided against it. If the Senator came up with the guarantee, then everything would be fine and dandy in any case. But if he didn’t, and particularly if he told George Spooner all about Makepeace’s fruitless speculations, then Makepeace was going to be something less than grateful. Collis considered it was probably wiser to leave the outcome as a surprise, whether it was pleasant, or unpleasant, or downright catastrophic.

  ‘I’m tired now,’ said Makepeace. ‘I’m going to take a shower bath. Am I going to see you later, or will you be out?’

  ‘I was thinking of meeting some friends for dinner.’

  ‘Well, then, I probably won’t.’

  Collis laid his arm around his father’s shoulders. He said gently, ‘I want you to know that I do support you. I know we have arguments, and fights; and I know we don’t see eye to eye on politics. But if there’s anything I can do to help you, well, you only have to let me know.’

  His father nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said gruffly, as if he was unsure whether to believe Collis or not, but prepared to accept his sympathy for the time being. Then he added, ‘By the way, I heard from my friend in Maine today. The fellow who was looking for a thirty-pound lobster for you.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ asked Collis. ‘Did he find one?’

  Makepeace started to sort through his pockets. ‘He didn’t exactly find one … wait a minute, I have his letter here someplace. He didn’t exactly find one … but he good as did.’

  ‘What do you mean, he good as did? Either you can find a thirty-pound lobster or you can’t.’

  Makepeace at last found the letter. He unfolded it carefully, peered at it, and then handed it to Collis. ‘You can see for yourself,’ he said.

  Collis held the letter up to the light that came through the crescent-shaped window above the front door. The writing was sloped, even, very old-style New England, like the original penmanship on the Declaration of Independence.

  It said:

  Belfast, Maine

  My dear Makepeace,

  Further to y’r inquiry for a 30-pound lobster, I have required my people to ask high and low of lobstermen and to haunt the fishmarkets for you. Regrettably, I have to inform you that the intensity of lobster catching these days is such that beasts of 20 pounds or more are not to be had. Even 12 pounds is considered a very substantial weight. Perhaps I can assist, however, by enclosing the following five affidavits, all legitimately signed by Maine lobstermen, each deposing that they have seen and handled in their time lobsters of 30 pounds in weight.