"Do what?"
"Borrow it," said the Duke. "How do you manage to get people to talk
about it? Here I am wanting to borrow a hundred thousand, and I'm
hanged if I can even find an opening."
At which the Viscount had said, "Pooh, pooh! you don't need any
opening. Just borrow it straight out--ask for it across a dinner table,
just as you'd ask for a match; they think nothing of it here."
"Across the dinner table?" repeated the Duke, who was a literal man.
"Certainly," said the Viscount. "Not too soon, you know--say after a
second glass of wine. I assure you it's absolutely nothing."
And it was just at that moment that a telegram was handed to the Duke
from Mr. Lucullus Fyshe, praying him, as he was reported to be visiting
the next day the City where the Mausoleum Club stands, to make
acquaintance with him by dining at that institution.
And the Duke, being as I say a literal man, decided that just as soon
as Mr. Fyshe should give him a second glass of wine, that second glass
should cost Mr. Fyshe a hundred thousand pounds sterling.
And oddly enough, at about the same moment, Mr. Fyshe was calculating
that provided he could make the Duke drink a second glass of the
Mausoleum champagne, that glass would cost the Duke about five million
dollars.
* * * * *
So the very morning after that the Duke had arrived on the New York
express in the City; and being an ordinary, democratic, commercial sort
of place, absorbed in its own affairs, it made no fuss over him
whatever. The morning edition of the _Plutopian Citizen_ simply said,
"We understand that the Duke of Dulham arrives at the Grand Palaver
this morning," after which it traced the Duke's pedigree back to Jock
of Ealing in the twelfth century and let the matter go at that; and the
noon edition of the _People's Advocate_ merely wrote, "We learn that
Duke Dulham is in town. He is a relation of Jack Ealing." But the
_Commercial Echo and Financial Undertone_, appearing at four o'clock,
printed in its stock-market columns the announcement: "We understand
that the Duke of Dulham, who arrives in town today, is proposing to
invest a large sum of money in American Industrials."
And, of course, that announcement reached every member of the Mausoleum
Club within twenty minutes.
* * * * *
The Duke of Dulham entered the Mausoleum Club that evening at exactly
seven of the clock. He was a short, thick man with a shaven face, red
as a brick, and grizzled hair, and from the look of him he could have
got a job at sight in any lumber camp in Wisconsin. He wore a dinner
jacket, just like an ordinary person, but even without his Norfolk coat
and his hobnailed boots there was something in the way in which he
walked up the long main hall of the Mausoleum Club that every imported
waiter in the place recognized in an instant.
The Duke cast his eye about the club and approved of it. It seemed to
him a modest, quiet place, very different from the staring ostentation
that one sees too often in a German hof or an Italian palazzo. He liked
it.
Mr. Fyshe and Mr. Furlong were standing in a deep alcove or bay where
there was a fire and india-rubber trees and pictures with shaded lights
and a whiskey-and-soda table. There the Duke joined them. Mr. Fyshe he
had met already that afternoon at the Palaver, and he called him
"Fyshe" as if he had known him forever; and indeed, after a few minutes
he called the rector of St. Asaph's simply "Furlong," for he had been
familiar with the Anglican clergy in so many parts of the world that he
knew that to attribute any peculiar godliness to them, socially, was
the worst possible taste.
"By Jove," said the Duke, turning to tap the leaf of a rubber tree with
his finger, "that fellow's a Nigerian, isn't he?"
"I hardly know," said Mr. Fyshe, "I imagine so"; and he added, "You've
been in Nigeria, Duke?"
"Oh, some years ago," said the Duke, "after big game, you know--fine
place for it."
"Did you get any?" asked Mr. Fyshe.
"Not much," said the Duke; "a hippo or two."
"Ah," said Mr. Fyshe.
"And, of course, now and then a giro," the Duke went on, and added, "My
sister was luckier, though; she potted a rhino one day, straight out of
a doolie; I call that rather good."
Mr. Fyshe called it that too.
"Ah, now here's a good thing," the Duke went on, looking at a picture.
He carried in his waistcoat pocket an eyeglass that he used for
pictures and for Tamworth hogs, and he put it to his eye with one hand,
keeping the other in the left pocket of his jacket; "and this--this is
a very good thing."
"I believe so," said Mr. Fyshe.
"You really have some awfully good things here," continued the Duke. He
had seen far too many pictures in too many places ever to speak of
"values" or "compositions" or anything of that sort. The Duke merely
looked at a picture and said, "Now here's a good thing," or "Ah! here
now is a very good thing," or, "I say, here's a really good thing."
No one could get past this sort of criticism. The Duke had long since
found it bullet-proof.
"They showed me some rather good things in New York," he went on, "but
really the things you have here seem to be awfully good things."
Indeed, the Duke was truly pleased with the pictures, for something in
their composition, or else in the soft, expensive light that shone on
them, enabled him to see in the distant background of each a hundred
thousand sterling. And that is a very beautiful picture indeed.
"When you come to our side of the water, Fyshe," said the Duke, "I must
show you my Botticelli."
Had Mr. Fyshe, who knew nothing of art, expressed his real thought, he
would have said, "Show me your which?" But he only answered, "I shall
be delighted to see it."
In any case there was no time to say more, for at this moment the
portly figure and the great face of Dr. Boomer, president of Plutoria
University, loomed upon them. And with him came a great burst of
conversation that blew all previous topics into fragments. He was
introduced to the Duke, and shook hands with Mr. Furlong, and talked to
both of them, and named the kind of cocktail that he wanted, all in one
breath, and in the very next he was asking the Duke about the
Babylonian hieroglyphic bricks that his grandfather, the thirteenth
Duke, had brought home from the Euphrates, and which every
archaeologist knew were preserved in the Duke's library at Dulham
Towers. And though the Duke hadn't known about the bricks himself, he
assured Dr. Boomer that his grandfather had collected some really good
things, quite remarkable.
And the Duke, having met a man who knew about his grandfather, felt in
his own element. In fact, he was so delighted with Dr. Boomer and the
Nigerian rubber tree and the shaded pictures and the charm of the whole
place and the certainty that half a million dollars was easily findable
in it, that he put his eyeglass back in his pocket and said.
"A charming club you have here, really most charming."
"Yes," said Mr. Fyshe, in a casual tone, "a comfortable place, we like
to think."
But if he could have seen what was happening below in the kitchens of
the Mausoleum Club, Mr. Fyshe would have realized that just then it was
turning into a most uncomfortable place.
For the walking delegate with his hat on sideways, who had haunted it
all day, was busy now among the assembled Chinese philosophers, writing
down names and distributing strikers' cards of the International Union
and assuring them that the "boys" of the Grand Palaver had all walked
out at seven, and that all the "boys" of the Commercial and the Union
and of every restaurant in town were out an hour ago.
And the philosophers were taking their cards and hanging up their
waiters' coats and putting on shabby jackets and bowler hats, worn
sideways, and changing themselves by a wonderful transformation from
respectable Chinese to slouching loafers of the lowest type.
But Mr. Fyshe, being in an alcove and not in the kitchens, saw nothing
of these things. Not even when the head waiter, shaking with
apprehension, appeared with cocktails made by himself, in glasses that
he himself had had to wipe, did Mr. Fyshe, absorbed in the easy
urbanity of the Duke, notice that anything was amiss.
Neither did his guests. For Dr. Boomer, having discovered that the Duke
had visited Nigeria, was asking him his opinion of the famous Bimbaweh
remains of the lower Niger. The Duke confessed that he really hadn't
noticed them, and the Doctor assured him that Strabo had indubitably
mentioned them (he would show the Duke the very passage), and that they
apparently lay, if his memory served him, about halfway between Oohat
and Ohat; whether above Oohat and below Ohat or above Ohat and below
Oohat he would not care to say for a certainty; for that the Duke must
wait till the president had time to consult his library.
And the Duke was fascinated forthwith with the president's knowledge of
Nigerian geography, and explained that he had once actually descended
from below Timbuctoo to Oohat in a doolie manned only by four swats.
So presently, having drunk the cocktails, the party moved solemnly in a
body from the alcove towards the private dining-room upstairs, still
busily talking of the Bimbaweh remains, and the swats, and whether the
doolie was, or was not, the original goatskin boat of the book of
Genesis.
And when they entered the private dining-room with its snow-white table
and cut glass and flowers (as arranged by a retreating philosopher now
heading towards the Gaiety Theatre with his hat over his eyes), the
Duke again exclaimed,
"Really, you have a most comfortable club--delightful."
So they sat down to dinner, over which Mr. Furlong offered up a grace
as short as any that are known even to the Anglican clergy. And the
head waiter, now in deep distress--for he had been sending out
telephone messages in vain to the Grand Palaver and the Continental,
like the captain of a sinking ship--served oysters that he had opened
himself and poured Rhine wine with a trembling hand. For he knew that
unless by magic a new chef and a waiter or two could be got from the
Palaver, all hope was lost.
But the guests still knew nothing of his fears. Dr. Boomer was eating
his oysters as a Nigerian hippo might eat up the crew of a doolie, in
great mouthfuls, and commenting as he did so upon the luxuriousness of
modern life.
And in the pause that followed the oysters he illustrated for the Duke
with two pieces of bread the essential difference in structure between
the Mexican _pueblo_ and the tribal house of the Navajos, and lest the
Duke should confound either or both of them with the adobe hut of the
Bimbaweh tribes he showed the difference at once with a couple of
olives.
By this time, of course, the delay in the service was getting
noticeable. Mr. Fyshe was directing angry glances towards the door,
looking for the reappearance of the waiter, and growling an apology to
his guests. But the president waved the apology aside.
"In my college days," he said, "I should have considered a plate of
oysters an ample meal. I should have asked for nothing more. We eat,"
he said, "too much."
This, of course, started Mr. Fyshe on his favourite topic. "Luxury!" he
exclaimed, "I should think so! It is the curse of the age. The
appalling growth of luxury, the piling up of money, the ease with which
huge fortunes are made" (Good! thought the Duke, here we are coming to
it), "these are the things that are going to ruin us. Mark my words,
the whole thing is bound to end in a tremendous crash. I don't mind
telling you, Duke--my friends here, I am sure, know it already--that I
am more or less a revolutionary socialist. I am absolutely convinced,
sir, that our modern civilization will end in a great social
catastrophe. Mark what I say"--and here Mr. Fyshe became exceedingly
impressive--"a great social catastrophe. Some of us may not live to see
it, perhaps; but you, for instance, Furlong, are a younger man; you
certainly will."
But here Mr. Fyshe was understating the case. They were all going to
live to see it, right on the spot.
For it was just at this moment, when Mr. Fyshe was talking of the
social catastrophe and explaining with flashing eyes that it was bound
to come, that it came; and when it came it lit, of all places in the
world, right there in the private dining-room of the Mausoleum Club.
For the gloomy head waiter re-entered and leaned over the back of Mr.
Fyshe's chair and whispered to him.
"Eh? what?" said Mr. Fyshe.
The head waiter, his features stricken with inward agony, whispered
again.
"The infernal, damn scoundrels!" said Mr. Fyshe, starting back in his
chair. "On strike: in this club! It's an outrage!"
"I'm very sorry sir. I didn't like to tell you, sir. I'd hoped I might
have got help from the outside, but it seems, sir, the hotels are all
the same way."
"Do you mean to say," said Mr. Fyshe, speaking very slowly, "that there
is no dinner?"
"I'm sorry, sir," moaned the waiter. "It appears the chef hadn't even
cooked it. Beyond what's on the table, sir, there's nothing."
The social catastrophe had come.
Mr. Fyshe sat silent with his fist clenched. Dr. Boomer, with his great
face transfixed, stared at the empty oyster-shells, thinking perhaps of
his college days. The Duke, with his hundred thousand dashed from his
lips in the second cup of champagne that was never served, thought of
his politeness first and murmured something about taking them to his
hotel.
But there is no need to follow the unhappy details of the unended
dinner. Mr. Fyshe's one idea was to be gone: he was too true an artist
to think that finance could be carried on over the table-cloth of a
second-rate restaurant, or on an empty stomach in a deserted club. The
thing must be done over again; he must wait his time and begin anew.
And so it came about that the little dinner party of Mr. Lucullus Fyshe
dissolved itself into its constituent elements, like broken pieces of
society in the great cataclysm portrayed by Mr. Fyshe himself.
The Duke was bowled home in a snorting motor to the brilliant rotunda
of the Grand Palaver, itself waiterless and supperless.
The rector of St. Asaph's wandered off home to his rectory, musing upon
the contents of its pantry.
And Mr. Fyshe and the gigantic Doctor walked side by side homewards
along Plutoria Avenue, beneath the elm trees. Nor had they gone any
great distance before Dr. Boomer fell to talking of the Duke.
"A charming man," he said, "delightful. I feel extremely sorry for him."
"No worse off, I presume, than any of the rest of us," growled Mr.
Fyshe, who was feeling in the sourest of democratic moods; "a man
doesn't need to be a duke to have a stomach."
"Oh, pooh, pooh!" said the president, waving the topic aside with his
hand in the air; "I don't refer to that. Oh, not at all. I was thinking
of his financial position--an ancient family like the Dulhams; it seems
too bad altogether."
For, of course, to an archaeologist like Dr. Boomer an intimate
acquaintance with the pedigree and fortunes of the greater ducal
families from Jock of Ealing downwards was nothing. It went without
saying. As beside the Neanderthal skull and the Bimbaweh ruins it
didn't count.
Mr. Fyshe stopped absolutely still in his tracks. "His financial
position?" he questioned, quick as a lynx.
"Certainly," said Dr. Boomer; "I had taken it for granted that you
knew. The Dulham family are practically ruined. The Duke, I imagine, is
under the necessity of mortgaging his estates; indeed, I should suppose
he is here in America to raise money."
Mr. Fyshe was a man of lightning action. Any man accustomed to the
Stock Exchange learns to think quickly.
"One moment!" he cried; "I see we are right at your door. May I just
run in and use your telephone? I want to call up Boulder for a moment."
Two minutes later Mr. Fyshe was saying into the telephone, "Oh, is that
you, Boulder? I was looking for you in vain today--wanted you to meet
the Duke of Dulham, who came in quite unexpectedly from New York; felt
sure you'd like to meet him. Wanted you at the club for dinner, and now
it turns out that the club's all upset--waiters' strike or some such
rascality--and the Palaver, so I hear, is in the same fix. Could you
possibly--"
Here Mr. Fyshe paused, listening a moment, and then went on, "Yes, yes;
an excellent idea--most kind of you. Pray do send your motor to the
hotel and give the Duke a bite of dinner. No, I wouldn't join you,
thanks. Most kind. Good night--"
And within a few minutes more the motor of Mr. Boulder was rolling down
from Plutoria Avenue to the Grand Palaver Hotel.
What passed between Mr. Boulder and the Duke that evening is not known.
That they must have proved congenial company to one another there is no
doubt. In fact, it would seem that, dissimilar as they were in many
ways, they found a common bond of interest in sport. And it is quite
likely that Mr. Boulder may have mentioned that he had a
hunting-lodge--what the Duke would call a shooting-box--in Wisconsin
woods, and that it was made of logs, rough cedar logs not squared, and
that the timber wolves and others which surrounded it were of a
ferocity without parallel.
Those who know the Duke best could measure the effect of that upon his
temperament.
At any rate, it is certain that Mr. Lucullus Fyshe at his
breakfast-table next morning chuckled with suppressed joy to read in
the _Plutopian Citizen_ the item:
"We learn that the Duke of Dulham, who has been paying a brief visit to
the City, leaves this morning with Mr. Asmodeus Boulder for the
Wisconsin woods. We understand that Mr. Boulder intends to show his
guest, who is an ardent sportsman, something of the American wolf."
* * * * *
And so the Duke went whirling westwards and northwards with Mr. Boulder
in the drawing-room end of a Pullman car, that was all littered up with
double-barrelled express rifles and leather game bags and lynx catchers
and wolf traps and Heaven knows what. And the Duke had on his very
roughest sporting-suit, made, apparently, of alligator hide; and as he
sat there with a rifle across his knees, while the train swept onwards
through open fields and broken woods, the real country at last, towards
the Wisconsin forest, there was such a light of genial happiness in his
face that had not been seen there since he had been marooned in the mud
jungles of Upper Burmah.
And opposite, Mr. Boulder looked at him with fixed silent eyes, and
murmured from time to time some renewed information of the ferocity of
the timber-wolf.
But of wolves other than the timber-wolf, and fiercer still into whose
hands the Duke might fall in America, he spoke never a word.
Nor is it known in the record what happened in Wisconsin, and to the
Mausoleum Club the Duke and his visit remained only as a passing and a
pleasant memory.