Tom Beauling/Chapter 18
IN the top of a very high building down-town, some twenty stories above his regular offices, Mr. Dunbar had what was known in business circles as "Dunbar's Emergency Suite." This consisted of a bedroom, baths, small kitchen, library, squash court, reception-room, and dining-room. Here lunch was laid for him and two or three friends every day, and here he was in the habit of retreating when he wished to avoid people, and here he sometimes slept. The windows looked over the harbor, and the apartment was situated so high that it had the double advantage of seaside and of mountain air. Here, whenever the market went to pieces and the street grew frantic, Mr. Dunbar was usually to be found playing a game of squash with himself or with a clerk to whom he had had the game taught by an English expert, enjoying the shower-bath or one of the comfortable reading-chairs in the library. This library was quite a charming room. It was embellished with a Turner, a Corot—you looked out of deep forest into a meadow full of cow-slips—the portrait of Lady Ingoldsby by Gainsborough, some rare bronzes, and some two hundred thousand dollars' worth of early American books.
A big bull movement in the market terminated that May in a criminal struggle between two powerful factions for the control of a railroad in the Northwest. The prices for the securities involved reached fabulous quotations, but the rest of the market smashed, groveled, shrieked. Investment stocks as safe as the Bank of England went about asking people to take them for nothing. Money became scarcer than charity. The banks shut up like clams.
Now it happened—it usually did happen at similar times—that Mr. Dunbar was comfortably out of the market. So when prices shrank to absurdities he was in a position to step cheerfully in, buy everything in sight, and simply wait. This he did. In two days the fighting factions came to terms. In a week the level of prices was again high. Mr. Dunbar spent a week unloading. Then, about eleven o'clock one morning, feeling very much at peace with the whole world, he retreated to his emergency suite, sweated in the squash court for half an hour, showered, dressed, commanded luncheon for three, and went into the library to write a note.
Dearest Lady: I look at my holdings, and the luck of recent years, and believe that I am the richest man in the world. I think of you, and know that I am.
J. D.
This he sent by a clerk to Mrs. Dunbar in the country. Then he was waited on by a courtly, white-haired gentleman representing a famous firm of jewelers uptown. The gentleman was accompanied by a bony, grim-visaged clerk who carried a big, black-leather case. The case was opened, and the light fell on six long strings of perfect white pearls, each as big as a cherry.
"Those will do," said Mr. Dunbar.
The bony clerk, hugging the black case to his chest, took the first train for the country.
Then Mr. Dunbar bethought him of another person, and wrote:
Dearest Phylis: If there is anything that you can think of that you want, please let me know. I've just sent your mother some pearls. You must play the spy, and tell me if she really likes them. Answer by messenger.
Affectionately,
J. D.
This was sent out by another clerk.
Then Mr. Dunbar called up his own office by telephone and asked for Mr. Beauling. He laughed all over to hear one of his own office-boys inquire in a loud, squeaky voice:
"What is the nature of your business?"
He then discovered himself, and caused a panic.
Presently Beauling's voice, rather tired and very busy, came up to him.
"Wareing is coming here to lunch," said Dunbar; "if you haven't anything better to do, join us—twenty-third floor."
"Going up to lunch with Mr. Dunbar?" asked the secretary of the Cuyar hoga Central. He had stepped in on business.
"Yes," said Beauling.
"That's the way millionaires are made," said the secretary.
A rat-faced boy dashed into the office, laid'slip of paper on Beauling's desk, nodded brightly, and went out on a run.
"No, that's the way," said Beauling. "That kid is thirteen years old. They tell me he had been down-town for three years, and that he has never lost a second."
Mr. Dunbar had one more interruption. Seven reporters, representing seven powerful dailies, sent in seven cards. He spoke with them at the door. They wanted very much to know if he knew anything about the proposed dividend on B. T. U.
"I know nothing," said Mr. Dunbar.
The seven reporters hurried away, carrying this important announcement to seven headquarters.
Mr. Dunbar was B. T. U.
At this time it occurred to him that a favorite pipe—the one mended with sealing-wax—was lurking somewhere in one of the drawers of the writing-table. He longed to smoke that particular pipe, and he began to search for it. In one of the drawers he came across a package of old photographs held together by elastics. He looked them over, and laughed to see the odd figures that old-fashioned clothes made of some of his most fashionable friends. Part of the package slipped from his hands and was scattered over the floor, face down. He began a childish game with himself, guessing by the appearance of the back what the picture would represent "Sanderson and Treek," he read. "That will be Wiswold, in his yachting-suit. Bach. That will be Hunter, taken for the class-book at New Haven—no, it's—why, it's little Peters, who never went there at all! Annatole, Paris, France. Hm-m! that will be Vicomte d'Unice—no, it's Bernhardt as Phèdre. Gilt gryphon's head; no name; that will be—" The photograph in question was yellow and stained. A shadow crossed Dunbar's face. "I thought I had destroyed that," he said. He turned the photograph over, and looked at himself as he had been at twenty-two, and at a beautiful young woman whom he had known in those days.
"We can never quite atone for some things," he said. "I can't forget you," he said to the young woman. "I wish I could; but I think I will tear you up—I thought I had long ago."
He tore, or rather broke, the photograph into little pieces.
Beauling was announced.
Dunbar dropped the rest of the photographs into the drawer and closed it He looked up at Beauling, whom he had come to regard with great affection.
"Tom," he said, "to-morrow is a bank holiday, and if yon We nothing better to do, come out with me to the country this afternoon for over Sunday."
"Grand!" said Beauling.
"And, Tom, I have some news for you. Wareing and I are going to start a bank in the fall, and, if you see it that way, we are going to make you our junior partner. I thought I'd tell you."
Beauling glanced about the room with dancing eyes.
"Mr. Dunbar," he said, "if you had had any idea of how much what you have said was going to mean to me, you wouldn't have told me in such a small room. You never told me," he said, "whether I was doing my work well or not, never made a sign, and now you tell me this. Don't let me shake hands with you," he said; "I'll hurt you if I do. I believe if I were to shake hands with the Statue of Liberty at this moment, I'd hurt her."
"What a kid you are, Tom!" said Dunbar, smiling.
"I've got to let it out somehow," said Beauling. In one corner of the room he perceived a Japanese bronze representing two billowy-muscled wrestlers. It weighed perhaps five hundred pounds. "This will do," he said. He forthwith picked the bronze up in his arms and, holding it like a baby, marched once around the room in triumph.
"Got it out?" said Dunbar.
"Not quite," said Beauling. He started on a second tour, during the completion of which Griswold B. Wareing of Pennsylvania entered.
"Hello!" he said, "what's all this?"
"Feathers!" said Beauling, and set down the bronze softly.
Wareing, always eager and curious, at once tried to heft the bronze. He could not budge it.
"Dunbar," said he, pointing to Beauling, "I'd be proud to be the father of that."
"Luncheon is served," announced the butler.