“I shall do as you order,” Van Teyl replied, “but you’re all against the general tone here. By the bye, you got my letter?”
“I haven’t opened it yet,” Fischer snapped. “What’s the matter?”
“Pamela and I have taken a little flat in Fifty-eighth Street. Seems a little abrupt, but she didn’t want to be alone, and she hates hotels. We felt sure you’d understand.”
“Yes, I understand,” Fischer said. “Good-by! I’m busy.”
The doctor completed his examination. When he had finished he mentioned his fee.
“You work too hard, and you live in an atmosphere of too great strain. The natural consequences are already beginning to show themselves. If I give you medicine, it will only encourage you to keep on wasting yourself, but you can have medicine if you like.”
“Send me something to take for the next fortnight,” Fischer replied. “After that, I’ll take my chance.”
The doctor wrote a prescription and took his leave. Fischer leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. His mind travelled back through these latter days of his over-strenuous life. In such minutes of relaxation, few of which he permitted himself, he realised with bitter completeness the catastrophe which had overtaken him—him, Oscar Fischer, of all men on earth. Into his life of grim purposes, of lofty and yet narrow ambitions, of almost superhuman tenacity, had crept the one weakening strain whose presence in other men he had always scoffed at and derived. There was a new and enervating glamour over the days, a new and hatefully powerful rival for all his thoughts and dreams. Ten years ago, he reflected sadly, this might have made a different man of him, might have unlocked the gates into another, more peaceful and beautiful world, visions of which had sometimes vaguely disturbed him in his cold and selfish climb. Now it could only mean suffering. This was the first stroke. It was the assertion of humanity which was responsible for his present weakness. How far might it not drag him down?
There should be a fight, at any rate, he told himself, as an hour or two later he made his way downtown. He paid several calls in the vicinity of Wall Street, and finished up in Van Teyl’s office. That young man greeted him with a certain relief.
“You know the tone of the market’s still against you, Fischer,” he warned him once more.
Fischer threw himself into the client’s easy-chair. The furniture in the office seemed less distinct than usual. He was conscious of a certain haziness of outline in everything. Van Teyl’s face, even, was shrouded in a little mist. Then he suddenly found himself fighting fiercely, fighting for his consciousness, fighting against a wave of giddiness, a deadly sinking of the heart, a strange slackening of all his nerve power. The young stockbroker rose hastily to his feet.
“Anything wrong, old fellow?” he asked anxiously.
“A glass of water,” Fischer begged.
He was conscious of drinking it, vaguely conscious that he was winning. Soon the office had regained its ordinary appearance, his pulse was beating more regularly. He had once more the feeling of living—of living, though in a minor key.
“A touch of liver,” he murmured. “What did you say about the markets?”
“You look pretty rotten,” Van Teyl remarked sympathetically. “Shall I send out for some brandy?”
“Not for me,” Fischer scoffed. “I don’t need it. What price are Anglo- French?”
“Ninety-four. You’ve only done them in a point, after all, and that’s nominal. I daresay I could get ten thousand back at that.”
“Let them alone,” was the calm reply. “I’ll sell another fifty thousand at ninety-four.”
“Look here,” Van Teyl said, swinging round in his chair, “I like the business and I know you can finance it, but are you sure that you realise what you are doing? Every one believes Anglo-French have touched their bottom. They’ve only to go back to where they were—say five points—and you’d lose half a million.”
Fischer smiled a little wearily.
“That small sum in arithmetic,” he remonstrated, “had already passed through my brain. Send in your selling order, Jim, and come out to lunch with me. I’ve come straight through from Washington—only got in this morning.”
Van Teyl called in his clerk and gave a few orders. Then he took up his hat and left the office with his client.
“From Washington, eh?” he remarked curiously, as they passed into the crowded streets. “So that accounts—”
He broke off abruptly. His companion’s warning fingers had tightened upon his arm.
“Quite right!” Van Teyl confessed. “There’s gossip enough about now, and they seem to have tumbled to it that you’re our client. The office has been besieged this morning. Sorry, Ned, I’m busy,” he went on, to a man who tried to catch his arm. “See you later, Fred. I’ll be in after lunch, Mr. Borrodaile. No, nothing fresh that I know of.”
Fischer smiled grimly.
“Got you into a kind of hornets’ nest, eh?” he observed.
“It’s been like this all the morning,” Van Teyl told him. “They believe I know something. Even the newspaper men are tumbling to it. We’ll lunch up at the club. Maybe we’ll get a little peace there.”
They stepped into the hall of a great building, and took one of the interminable row of lifts. A few minutes later they were seated at a side table in a dining room on the top floor of one of the huge modern skyscrapers. Below them stretched a silent panorama of the city; beyond, a picturesque view of the river. A fresh breeze blew in through the opened window. They were above the noise, even, of the street cars.
“Order me a small bottle of champagne, James,” Fischer begged, “and some steak.”
Van Teyl stared at his companion and laughed as he took up the wine list.
“Well, that’s the first time, Fischer, I’ve known you to touch a drop of anything before the evening! I’ll have a whisky and soda with you. Thank God we’re away from that inquisitive crowd for a few minutes! Are you going to give me an idea of what’s moving?”
Fischer watched the wine being poured into his glass.
“Not until this evening,” he said. “I want you to bring your sister and come and dine at the new roof-garden.”
“I don’t know whether Pamela has any engagement,” Van Teyl began, a little dubiously.
“Please go and see,” Fischer begged earnestly. “The telephones are just outside. Tell your sister that I particularly wish her to accept my invitation. Tell her that there will be news.”
Van Teyl went out to the telephone. Fischer sipped his champagne and crumbled up his bread, his eyes fixed a little dreamily on the grey river. He was already conscious of the glow of the wine in his veins. The sensation was half pleasurable, in a sense distasteful to him. He resented this artificial humanity. He had the feeling of a man who has stooped to be doped by a quack doctor. And he was a little afraid.
His young companion returned triumphant.
“Had a little trouble with Pamela,” he observed, as he resumed his place at the table. “She was thinking of the opera with a girl friend she picked up this morning. However, the idea of news, I think, clinched it. We’ll be at the Oriental at eight o’clock, eh?”
Fischer looked up from the fascinating patchwork below. Already there was anticipation in his face.
“I am very glad,” he said. “There will certainly be news.”
CHAPTER XXIV
Table of Contents
“Now indeed I feel that I am in New York,” Pamela declared, as she broke off one of the blossoms of the great cluster of deep red roses by her side, and gazed downward over her shoulder at the far-flung carpet of lights. “One sees little bits of America in every country of the world, but never this.”
Fischer, unusually grave and funereal-looking in his dinner clothes and black tie, followed her gesture with thoughtful eyes. Everything that was ugly in the stretching arms of the city seemed softened, shrouded and bejewelled. Even the sounds, the rattle and roar of the overhead railways, the clanging of t
he electric car bells, the shrieking of the sirens upon the river, seemed somehow to have lost their harsh note, to have become the human cry of the great live city, awaking and stretching itself for the night.
“I agree with you,” he said. “You dine at the Ritz-Carlton and you might be in Paris. You dine here, and one knows that you are in America.”
“Yet even here we have become increasingly luxurious,” Pamela remarked, looking around. “The glass and linen upon the tables are quite French; those shaded lights are exquisite. That little band, too, was playing at the Ritz three years ago. I am sure that the maitre d’hotel who brought us to our table was once at the Cafe de Paris.”
“Money would draw all those things from Europe even to the Sahara,” Fischer observed, “so long as there were plenty of it. But millions could not buy our dining table in the clouds.”
“A little effort of the imagination, fortunately,” Pamela laughed, looking upwards. “There are stars, but no clouds.”
“I guess one of them is going to slip down to the next table before long,” Van Teyl observed, with a little movement of his head.
They all three turned around and looked at the wonderful bank of pink roses within a few feet of them.
“One of the opera women, I daresay,” the young man continued. “They are rather fond of this place.”
Pamela leaned forward. Fischer was watching the streets below; Only a short distance away was a huge newspaper building, flaring with lights. The pavements fringing it were thronged with a little stationary crowd. A row of motor-bicycles was in waiting. A night edition of the paper was almost due.
“Mr. Fischer,” she asked, “what about that news?”
He withdrew his eyes from the street. Almost unconsciously he straightened himself a little in his place. There was pride in his tone. Behind his spectacles his eyes flashed.
“I would have told it you before,” he said, “but you would not have believed it. Soon==in a very few moments==the news will be known. You will see it break away in waves from that building down there, so I will bear with your incredulity. The German and British fleets have met, and the victory has remained with us.”
“With us?” Pamela repeated.
“With Germany,” Fischer corrected himself hastily.
“Is this true?” James Van Teyl almost shouted. “Fischer, are you sure of what you’re saying? Why, it’s incredible!”
“It is true,” was the proud reply. “The German Navy has been a long time proving itself. It has done so now. To-day every German citizen is the proudest creature breathing. He knew before that his armies were invincible. He knows now that his fleet is destined to make his country the mistress of the seas. England’s day is over. Her ships were badly handled and foolishly flung into battle. She has lost many of her finest units. Her Navy is to-day a crippled and maimed force. The German fleet is out in the North Sea, waiting for an enemy who has disappeared.”
“It is inconceivable,” Pamela gasped.
“I do not ask you to believe my word,” Fischer exclaimed. “Look!”
As though the flood gates had been suddenly opened, the stream of patient waiters broke away from the newspaper building below. Like little fireflies, the motor-bicycles were tearing down the different thoroughfares. Boys like ants, with their burden of news sheets, were running in every direction. Motor-trucks had started on their furious race. Even the distant echoes of their cries came faintly up. Fischer called a messenger and sent him for a paper.
“I do not know what report you will see,” he said, “but from whatever source it comes it will confirm my story. The news is too great and sweeping to be contradicted or ignored.”
“If it’s true,” Van Teyl muttered, “you’ve made a fortune in my office to- day. It looks like it, too. There was something wrong with Anglo-French beside your selling for the last hour this afternoon. I couldn’t get buyers to listen for a moment.”
“Yes, I shall have made a great deal of money,” Fischer admitted, “money which I shall value because it comes magnificently, but I hope that this victory may help me to win other things.”
He looked fixedly at Pamela, and she moved uneasily in her chair. Almost unconsciously the man himself seemed somehow associated with his cause, to be assuming a larger and more tolerant place in her thoughts. Perhaps there was some measure of greatness about him after all. The strain of waiting for the papers became almost intolerable. At last the boy reappeared. The great black headlines were stretched out before her. She felt the envelopment of Fischer’s triumph. The words were there in solid type, and the paper itself was one of the most reliable.
GREAT NAVAL BATTLE IN THE NORTH SEA
BRITISH ADMIRALTY ADMITS SERIOUS LOSSES
“QUEEN MARY,” “INDEFATIGABLE,” AND MANY FINE SHIPS LOST.
Pamela looked up from the sheet.
“It is too wonderful,” she whispered, with a note of awe in her tone. “I don’t think that any one ever expected this. We all believed in the British Navy.”
“There is nothing,” Fischer declared, “that England can do which Germany cannot do better.”
“And America best of all,” Pamela said.
Fischer bowed.
“That is one comparison which will never now be made,” he declared, “for from to-night Germany and America will draw nearer together. The bubble of British naval omnipotence is pricked.”
“Meanwhile,” Van Teyl observed, putting his paper away, “we are neglecting our dinner. Nothing like a good dose of sensationalism for giving us an appetite.”
Fischer was watching his glass being filled with champagne. He seized it by the stem. His eyes for a moment travelled upwards.
“I am an American citizen,” he said, with a strange fervour in his tone, “but for the moment I am called back. And so I lift my glass and I drink==I alone, without invitation to you others==to those brave souls who have made of the North Sea a holy battle-ground.”
He drained his glass and set it down empty. Pamela watched him as though fascinated. For a single moment she was conscious of a queer sensation of personal pity for some shadowy and absent friend, of something almost like a lump in her throat, a strange instinct of antagonism towards the man by her side so enveloped in beatific satisfaction==then she frowned when she realised that she had been thinking of Lutchester, that her first impulse had been one of sympathy for him. The moment passed. The service of dinner was pressed more insistently upon them. James Van Teyl, who had been leaning back in his chair, talking to one of the maitres d’hotel, dismissed him with a little nod and entrusted them with a confidence.
“Say, do you know who’s coming to the next table?” he exclaimed. “Sonia!”
They were all interested.
“You won’t mind?” Fischer asked diffidently.
“In a restaurant, how absurd!” Pamela laughed. “Why, I’m dying to see her. I wonder how it is that some of these greatest singers in the world lead such extraordinary lives that people can never know anything of them.”
“Society is tolerant enough nowadays,” her brother observed, “but Sonia won’t give them even a decent chance to wink at her eccentricities. She crossed, you know, on the Prince Doronda’s yacht, for fear they wouldn’t let her land.”
“Here she comes,” Pamela whispered.
There was a moment’s spellbound silence. Two maitres d’hotel were hurrying in front. A pathway from the lift had been cleared as though for a royal personage. Sonia, in white from head to foot, a dream of white lace and chinchilla, with a Russian crown of pearls in her glossy black hair, and a rope of pearls around her neck, came like a waxen figure, with scarlet lips and flashing eyes, towards her table. And behind her==Lutchester! Pamela felt her fingers gripping the tablecloth. Her first impulse, curiously enough, was one of wild fury with herself for that single instant’s pity. Her face grew cold and hard. She felt herself sitting a little more upright. Her eyes remained fixed upon the newcomers.
Lutchester�
�s behaviour was admirable. His glance swept their little table without even a shadow of interest. He ignored with passive unconcern the mistake of Van Teyl’s attempted greeting. He looked through Fischer as though he had been a ghost. He stood by Sonia’s side while she seated herself, and listened with courteous pleasure to her excited admiration of the flowers and the wonderful vista. Then he took his own place. In his right hand he was carrying an evening paper with its flaming headlines.
“That,” Fischer pronounced, struggling to keep the joy from his tone, “is very British and very magnificent!”
* * * * *
Pamela had imperfect recollections of the rest of the evening. She remembered that she was more than usually gay throughout dinner-time, but that she was the first to jump at the idea of a hurried departure and a visit to a cabaret. Every now and then she caught a glimpse of Sonia’s face, saw the challenging light in her brilliant eyes, heard little scraps of her conversation. The Frenchwoman spoke always in her own language, with a rather shrill voice, which made Lutchester’s replies sound graver and quieter than usual. More than once Pamela’s eyes rested upon the broad lines of his back. He sat all the time like a rock, courteous, at times obviously amusing, but underneath it all she fancied that she saw some signs of the disturbance from which she herself was suffering. She rose to her feet at last with a little sigh of relief. It was an ordeal through which she had passed.
Once in the lift, her brother and Fischer discussed Lutchester’s indiscretion volubly.
“I suppose,” Van Teyl declared, “that there isn’t a man in New York who wouldn’t have jumped at the chance of dining alone with Sonia, but for an Englishman, on a night like this,” he went on, glancing at the paper, “say, he must have some nerve!”
“Or else,” Fischer remarked, “a wonderful indifference. So far as I have studied the Anglo-Saxon temperament, I should be inclined to vote for the indifference. That is why I think Germany will win the war. Every man in that country prays for his country’s success, not only in words, but with his soul. I have not found the same spirit in England.”
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