Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
Time Out of Mind (64 page)
“
Sam Clemens!” Teddy tried another hand, another fin
ger. “Samuel Clemens had the grace to drop in and wish
my humble effort well. As did Henry James and Ida Tarbell
and little Nelly Bly who, by the way, inquired after a friend of yours.’’
A second pause. A second lure left untaken.
“
But no Tilden Beckwith.” Roosevelt pounded a fist
into his palm. “The loss, however, was his own. For if
he'd been there he would have seen Maurice Barrymore
reciting
Hamlet
while attempting, on a wager, to juggle four
live lobsters. He would have heard his friend Nat Goodwin cornering the aforementioned dowagers and regaling them
with the proper technique of disemboweling a jackrabbit,
and our friend John Flood who tried for the knockout punch
with tales of biting the heads off chickens as a lad in
County Sligo.”
“
Ireland?” Tilden could not help himself. “John was
born right here.”
”
A detail of no consequence to a lady sliding down the
wall in an attack of the vapors.*’ Roosevelt's face softened
just a fraction. ”I missed you, Tilden.”
”
I am sorry, Teddy.” Tilden rose from his chair, his
hand extended. “Life has been complex this past year.”
Roosevelt took the hand and held it. He looked into Til
den's eyes through his spectacles. “And the widow Corbin,
is she quite the rose by whatever name that John and Nelly
claim she is?”
“
John told you?”
”
I threatened to go a round or two with him if he
didn't.”
.“She is a very good woman, Teddy,” Tilden said solemnly. “She fills all the corners of my heart and I honor
her.”
“
Then may God bless you both.” He released the hand. “But may I curse you first for thinking that your friend is
such a prig?”
“
There were private things I could not tell you, Teddy.
With what remained, I did not think I could make you
understand.”
Teddy leaned closer. “May I also curse you for thinking
that your friend would be your friend only as long as you
thought as he did?”
“
Accepted.” Tilden bowed. “And deserved.”
Roosevelt clasped his hands behind his back. “You have
other friends, you know, who think differently from either of us. Have you noticed that your name is nowhere to be
found in the pages of
Town Topics
these past weeks?”
He shook his head to show that Roosevelt's meaning eluded
him.
John Flood and Nat Goodwin are your friends,” Teddy
said quietly. “And they in turn have a friend who seems
to have visited Colonel Mann and told him, after clubbing
his bodyguard to the ground, that the next mention of any Beckwith in his paper would be at the cost of both his eyes.
I am to tell you that Billy O'Gorman sends his compli
ments.”
O'Gorman?” Tilden blinked. “O'Gorman acted for me?”
I don't know the man. John said you'd understand if I
reminded you that you left O'Gorman with his pride.”
Tilden remembered. /
never took all a man had. .. I
never shamed him
...
That O`Gorman's a bad one, but you
left him proud. Ansel Carling 's a bad one, but you left him
nothin', lad. Nothin’ but gettin' even.
Tilden pushed Carling out of his mind, but he made a mental note that he'd
have to give Billy O'Gorman another crack one of these
days. He owed him that. “Where is John, by the way?”
he asked. “I've tried several times to reach him.”
He's gone back upstate with John L. Sullivan. Chop
ping trees and running mountain roads. It seems he's taken up the mission of keeping Sullivan out of saloons and pastry shops so he's fit to defend his title against Jake Kilrain
next summer.”
week he's got from the look of Sullivan last time I saw
him.”
ested him, his mind was on more troubling matters..''Back
to this chap O'Gorman, Tilden. There is a thing I'd like to
ask you.”
“
Ask.” Tilden waited.
“
His report to John Flood was that when Colonel Mann
was in fear of blindness or worse, Mann whimpered some
tale about having given you some valuable evidence on Jay
Gould's man, Carling. The implication was that it is suffi
ciently damning that you might blackmail Gould with it.”
“”
It might have been if I had chosen to use it. I did not
so choose.”
“
Not even to protect your friend? To say nothing of what
I hear Gould is doing to your business accounts?”
Tilden straightened. “My friend has a name, Teddy. I
hope you will be pleased to meet her one day.”
“
One day soon, I hope. No offense meant, Tilden.”
As for the business, we are holding our own. We've lost the accounts of a few timid men, but I will not win them back at the cost of becoming a blackmailer.”
“
Even at the cost of failing in your father's trust?”
“
Honor
is
my father's trust.”
“
And yet you paid for the information.”
My intention was and is,” Tilden said slowly, clearly
annoyed that his friend would doubt his course, “precisely what yours would have been. I intended to take Carling by
the scruff of the neck when next I found him, whisper in
his ear the things I know, and suggest that Australia might
be a more suitable address for him.”
“
Will you tell me what it is you know?” Roosevelt
asked.
“
It is a private matter.”
“
Hah!” Roosevelt grinned suddenly and hugely. “It is
as I'd hoped. Now it's time for me to confess that I've been
meddling in your affairs. I've been to see Morgan about you. He wants you in his office tomorrow at ten.”
Tilden stared uncomprehendingly. He knew who Morgan
was, of course. There was only one Morgan.
“
What could he want with me?”
He wants to help you. I knew of some of the losses
you'd suffered, and when I mentioned them to Morgan the
man snorted and said he'd replace that pittance before
lunch.”
Tilden shook his head. “Teddy”—he searched for
words—”I may be slow on the uptake
...
I am his com
petitor. It's true that Beckwith and Company is a mere gnat
against the House of Pierpont Morgan, but all the same,
why would he possibly want to assist me?”
“
He likes you.”
Nonsense. J. P. Morgan doesn't like anyone. The man has looked at me exactly three times in my life. The first
time he scowled, the second he grunted, the third he nod
ded.’
You see?” Roosevelt said brightly. “He's been warming up to you. For Pierpont Morgan, a grunt is the. equal
of a soliloquy.”
gan would be interested in me?”
He hates Gould, of course. Despises the man. To
sweeten matters even further, he also believes he's been
cheated by Ansel Carling who once sold him a leaf from
an illuminated Bible. It was supposed to be a rare Septua
gint, I think, and it turned out to be a sixteenth-century
copy.”
had a small collection of illuminated manuscripts. Ella had
pointed it out as evidence that some men of business were
more cultivated than others. Knowing Carling, Tilden
thought the entire collection was probably made up of copies or fakes, yet was adequate to its purpose of creating the
illusion of both piety and culture, plus an occasional sale
to the unwary. Still, Tilden remained doubtful.
“
That seems a poor reason,” he said. “The whole of
Europe has been cheating Morgan and half the other
mon
eyed men in America for the past ten years, Gould in
cluded.”
Naturally.” Roosevelt clapped his hands. “The com
bination of unlimited funds, unlimited pretensions, and pro
found ignorance of art has served to tidy up many a French or Dutch attic. Morgan, however, is no fool. He knows that
the value of a work of art is what someone else will pay
for it, and he knows there are many who'll pay handsomely
for a piece that was once in the Morgan collection. There
are many forms of cheating, you see. But being cheated by a dealer and being bested by Gould or one of Gould's peo
ple are not the same thing. Go see him, Tilden. It is a rare
opportunity.”
“
Ten o'clock, you say? Tomorrow?”
“
At Twenty-three Wall Street. He says he plans to take
a walk with you.”
“
Your father is well?” John Pierpont Morgan did not otherwise greet Tilden, nor look up from his desk, as an as
sistant in a swallowtail coat ushered Tilden into the great man's office. Tilden made a conscious effort, as Teddy had warned, not to let his eyes rest upon Morgan's veined and swollen nose.
“
Quiet well, sir. Improving.”
page, then either making a note across the top or dismissing
some earnest proposal with a contemptuous sweep of his
pen. Tilden glanced around the office, waiting. It was
smaller than he would have imagined, and crowded. A few more items and it would have resembled an auction gallery.
There was not a square foot of wall space left uncovered by a painting or tapestry, most having religious themes.
Tiny miniatures set in little jeweled frames competed at a
disadvantage against gaudy church ornaments. A built-in
bookcase fairly bulged with faded manuscripts, which
seemed insignificant alongside gilded special editions in red
and brown leather. Yet among those cracked and shabby
manuscripts, Teddy had said, were almost the complete original works of Sir Walter Scott and many of the poems
of Keats and Lord Byron. Byron's poem “The Corsair”
hung framed in glass beneath a photograph of Morgan's
yacht, which bore the same name.
“
You are a yachtsman?” He still had not looked up.
”
I own a small launch at the moment,” Tilden told him, “but I enjoy racing under sail. And an occasional pleasure
cruise.”
“‘
Corsair
is steam, not sail.”
”
I know, sir.”
“
You prefer sail?”
“
Yes, sir.”
”
I don't.”
“
Yes, sir. Shall I sit down?”
“
We're not staying.”
Tilden examined the ceiling. He knew better than to be
offended by Morgan's curtness. The man's reputation was
that he had almost no capacity for polite conversation and none at all for a democratic view of his fellow man. He
considered people, including women, according to function
and their level of competence. He was a compulsive, self-
driven man, quite aware that he stood supreme among men
of business and that he wielded more power than many a
head of state. Here was a man to whom more than one
United States president had come as supplicant, who lent
money to his nation's treasury, and who attached strict con
ditions to its use. Here was also a man who had been known
to throw food or clothing at servants who failed to antici
pate his wishes and to likewise throw ledgers at the heads
of his executives when he thought their decisions short
sighted, but who would be astonished to learn that either took offense. They were there to serve his needs and that
was that.