Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (475 page)

“Mr. Dexter, there’s some chap at the end of this telephone who says you’re to sign any damn thing we please as long as he gets the concession.”

Mr. Dexter turned sharply round. Mr. Pett was hanging up the receiver on its hook.

“My God!” Mr. Dexter exclaimed, “you’ve been speaking to Hodges P. Mordaunt, and you’ve rung him off!”

Mr. Pett said: “Oh, that was Hodges P. Mordaunt, was it? And he is behind you, is he? I am glad I know.”

Mr. Dexter snatched fiercely at the telephone. He called down to the office that they were to ring Mr. Mordaunt in Paris at once again. He said that they had been cut off by mistake; and when the central office told him that it would probably take him a couple of hours to get on to Paris again, Mr. Dexter groaned aloud. He wanted to speak to Mr. Mordaunt as desperately as a child when it is in the dark wants to speak to a grown-up person. He really didn’t know where he was. He was extraordinarily nervous. The people he was among were not like any American business people he had ever been used to. For he was used to gentlemen who paid him profuse compliments for two hours and a half over a lunch table, and then tried to slip in a business deal whilst they were getting their hats and sticks in the cloak room. These people weren’t business people. They hadn’t paid him any compliments at all. They had treated him quite insolently, and they had got to business with a directness that struck Mr. Dexter as being nothing more or less than brutally unusual. But they seemed to be inclined to allow him time to think. He had gone back to his armchair and was sitting sunk in it, with his legs stretched out before him. And the only thing that occurred to him to say was:

“Well, yes, Hodges P. Mordaunt is behind me.”

He expected that they would at least show some signs of astonished respect. But they didn’t any of them seem to take any more stock of Hodges P. Mordaunt than if he had been just an ordinary banker. And he could not afford to let things go as easily as all that. He looked at the gentleman called Mr. Archibald and coughed.

“You’ll understand,” he said, “that having to represent the interests of Mr. Mordaunt it was my duty to make some inquiry as to our friend the Count’s position.”

“I should have thought,” Mr. Archibald replied, “that you would have done that at the start, and not left it so late that it appears like an insult to all of us.”

“An insult!” Mr. Dexter exclaimed. “There’s nothing like an insult meant. We are here all of us to-day to put our cards upon the table. The point is to determine what we are all ready to do in this undertaking that we all have at heart.”

“That sounds all right,” Mr. Pett said.

And suddenly from beside him the young King brought out the words:

“If any one is beginning to insult my friend Macdonald, I vote that that person be ejected from this room. My friend Macdonald is a thundering good sort.”

“Oh, it’s all right, Mr. Spenlow,” Macdonald said soothingly. “Nobody is insulting me.”

Mr. Dexter appealed to Macdonald. “Now, why do you call His Majesty Mr. Spenlow?” he said.

Mr. Pett suddenly cut in: “That’s my idea, that is. What you don’t seem to understand is that we want a certain amount of secrecy about this affair. So I’ve insisted that any one who is at all likely to be connected in the public mind with the kingdom we are concerned in shall be addressed by a name that isn’t his.”

“That seems very sensible,” Mr. Dexter said.

“So,” Mr. Pett continued, “as nobody would connect you with the great ones of the earth, you can continue to be Mr. Dexter and I can go on being myself for the same reason. You and I are of humble birth and don’t count. But the Marquis da Pinta has got to be Mr. Rosenbaum. He looks like a Jew, so we can remember that, and as he hardly ever speaks it doesn’t much matter. And Macdonald is going to be Mr. Mack, because we all call him Mac, and that makes it easy. The King is Mr. Spenlow, and that is Mr. Archibald, and that is Lady — I mean Mrs. Fawkner. Now you know all about it, and we can get on.”

“I wish we could get on,” the King said. “I want to be out of this. I want to be at Brooklands by twelve.”

“Oh, we are making very good progress, Mr. Spenlow,” Mr. Pett said. “Now then, Mr. Dexter, for all our cards are on the table!... First, there is me. I’m the brains of the show. Then there’s Mr. Spenlow and Mr. Rosenbaum there. They provide the raw material of the concession we’re going to work. Then there is Mack there. He does the organising and the picturesque side of the job — the battleships and so on. Mr. Rosenbaum also sees to the bribing of the population that we’ve got to bribe. Then there’s Mr. Archibald — you can take my word for it that he’s a substantial gentleman. And there’s Mrs. Fawkner; she is substantial too. They’re here to see whether the cards you lay on the table are good enough to let them want to take a hand in the game. Now, then, what are your cards? You’re down for eight million pounds sterling — forty million dollars — and your chief says you’re to sign any damn thing we put before you. Is that so?” Mr. Dexter coughed faintly: “As I have Mr. Mordaunt’s instructions,” he said, “I am only to enter this enterprise if it has the backing of a certain lady and a certain nobleman.”

“Well, that’s all right,” Mr. Archibald said. “You’ve got me and Mrs. Fawkner.”

Mr. Dexter gave a smile which was meant to show a polite and superior patience.

“That may be very well,” he said; “but the lady and gentleman I mean are people of extremely high situation and great resources. I mean that the lady is said to be in a position to draw her cheque for a couple of million sterling at two days’ notice.” He looked at Mrs. Fawkner and smiled. “That you’ll understand, madam,” he continued, “makes it almost an impossibility!...”

He received back a polite look from a pair of eyes that appeared to him to be extraordinarily cold and English. He couldn’t remember to have noticed the name of Fawkner in Debrett, though he had studied that volume very carefully. The lady sat quite still, with her gloved hands folded before her. Her sitting forward in her deep chair gave her an aspect of a slight, business-like stiffness. She spoke very precisely.

“I have come prepared,” she said, “to pay to the account of Mr. Mack the exact sum that you mention, as soon as I am assured that you are ready to place at his disposal the sum which you are understood to be ready to find.”

Mr. Dexter said: “But my dear madam—”

Mrs. Fawkner continued: “And I may as well tell you — I dislike talking about money matters, and I have reflected sufficiently about it — that if you do not feel inclined to find this money at once, and to leave the whole conduct of the matter in the hands of Mr. Mack, I shall myself do so.”

Mr. Dexter exclaimed: “Do what?”

“I shall find the whole of the money for this enterprise.”

“But you’re not serious?” Mr. Dexter said. “You really can’t be in earnest?”

“Do I look,” the lady said, “as if I were not in earnest? I have considered the matter quite carefully. I don’t mind telling you that I suspected that you were only acting as the agent for Mr. Mordaunt, and I put it to my financial advisers that what is a good-enough speculation for Mr. Mordaunt is a good-enough speculation for me. It is probably better for me, because I already, along with some of my friends, have interests in the direction in which the money is laid out.”

Mr. Dexter said: “But pray, pray excuse me for a minute.”

He felt a desperate desire to get into his bedroom, the door of which stood ajar just at his right hand. His bedroom seemed to him to be a blessed place of refuge since it contained all the British books of reference to noble, landed, or wealthy families. If this Mrs. Fawkner really had at her command a sum of about fifty million dollars, he must certainly be able to trace her.

“Just wait a minute,” the lady said, “and then I shall have done speaking. There are these considerations which I may as well put to you. I am quite determined to put this sum at the disposal of Mr. Mack — if it is absolutely necessary. But, of course, I do not wish to disturb to such an extent the capital of myself and various friends. And I quite understand that if in this way I should come against your principals, something like a financial war might ensue. But, as far as I’ve been informed of the financial methods of your principal, I believe that he has a strong objection to such conflicts. I don’t believe that he will really want to come into conflict with my interests, which, in this particular field, are fairly powerful. That is really all I have to say. And if you wish to consult any friends whom you may have in the next room, I have now nothing against it.”

Mr. Dexter exclaimed with the utmost astonishment: “Friends in the next room — I?”

“It would really be much better,” the lady said, “to be perfectly open in these matters. You locked the door of this room quite ostentatiously when we all came in. But for the last five minutes I have observed a shadow of one or possibly two persons through the crack of the door in your room. I really don’t see any reason for this delicacy on your part. That is all I mean. Your friends may just as well be in this room as in that. I have nothing at all against it.”

Mr. Dexter suddenly fell back from the door of his own bedroom, for the door opened of itself.

There came in the Countess Macdonald in an outdoor costume of Oriental furs; she was dragging behind her Miss Dexter.

“My dear Lady Aldington,” she said in her high voice, “Mr. Dexter is entirely innocent. We found the door of this room locked, and as Miss Dexter was anxious to introduce me to her father, I suggested that she’d better take me through his bedroom. It has a door on the corridor.”

“And so you have been listening for the last five minutes,” Mr. Archibald said to the lady in Oriental furs.

“My dear Kintyre,” the lady said, “of course I’ve been listening. It was my business to listen.”

And in the momentary silence that ensued, each of the syndicate was perfectly aware that everyone else of the syndicate was trying to remember what they had said in the last five minutes, Mr. Pett cheerfully broke the silence: “Oh, that’s all right, Countess Mac,” he said; “there is no reason why you shouldn’t hear. I hope you won’t let it out, though, and spoil the show.”

“I shall make exactly what use of the information I please,” the Countess said.

“Oh, please don’t do that,” Mr. Pett said. “You’ll upset all our prima donnas and tenors all over the world. It’s no end of a ticklish job getting together a gigantic opera trust like this.”

Kintyre had been looking with a serious glance at Miss Dexter, and behind the Countess’s back Miss Dexter was silently weeping.

“I couldn’t help it,” she sobbed; “no, I couldn’t help it. Don’t you look at me like that.”

The Duke looked at Countess Macdonald. “My dear woman,” he said, “I don’t suppose you really want to interfere with a harmless enterprise like ours. I don’t know whether you had really gathered what we were up to. But, as Mr. Pett has amiably let the cat out of the bag, we are doing nothing more than getting together a syndicate for the reformation of English opera upon national lines.”

“And what,” the Countess asked, “has Sergius Mihailovitch got to do with the grand opera? The ballet is much more in his line.”

“Oh, of course,” the Duke said, “he will have the management of the ballet as well.”

“That,” the Countess said, “is probably the real attraction for him.”

Suddenly Lady Aldington rose from her deep chair.

“I don’t see any use in prolonging this meeting,” she said. She looked at Mr. Dexter. “You have my terms,” she said. “I presume you understand them, and you’ll agree when you discuss the matter with your principal.

You can telephone to me at any time you like at Leicester House.”

And Lady Aldington walked towards the door. Mr. Dexter almost ran to open it for her. She included the company in a slight inclination of farewell. Kintyre still sat deep in his armchair, as he always did when he had nothing else to do. He drew from his waistcoat pocket a single eyeglass that he fixed unskilfully in his right eye. It was a sort of toy that amused his idle habit of mind. Through it he gazed at the Countess, screwing up his features so that, olive-skinned and dark-bearded, he resembled a Spanish Don trying to imitate the grimaces of a clown. The Countess looked at him sardonically.