Lady of Fortune

by Graham Masterton

  This won’t mean a lot to you,’ said John Browning, ‘but this is a 30-calibre weapon with a muzzle-velocity of 2800 feet per second. It can fire accurately up to 2500 yards, and it’s fed – as you’ll see now by the ammunition that Richard’s bringing over – by a belt of 30-inch M1906 cartridges. In this jacket that surrounds the barrel, this bit that looks like a telescope, there’s water, which cools the barrel as the gun is fired. I hear that in the trenches in Flanders, the British Tommies often fire off a few belts of ammunition so that they can bring the water in the cooling-jackets of their machine-guns up to boiling-point, and make tea with it. Quite a few Germans have died simply, because the British troops decided it was time for a brew-up.’

  At the far end of the field, a row of old wooden doors had been set up as a targets. John Browning crouched down behind his gun, and said to Effie, ‘Cover your ears.’

  There was a deafening rattling sound, accompanied by a clattering fountain of used cartridges, and followed by a cloud of flat grey smoke. Effie, her hands still clasped over her ears, peered down towards the row of doors and saw that one of them had been literally sawn in half.

  ‘That’s extraordinary,’ she said.

  ‘Try it for yourself,’ John Browning invited her.

  ‘Do you mean it? I couldn’t!’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  In her white mink coat, she sat cautiously down on an upturned ammunition box, and took the small wooden pistol-grip of the machine-gun in her hand. The gun swung quite easily from side to side, and through the sights she could see the row of doors. John Browning pulled back the cooking-handle, and then said encouragingly, ‘Off you go. Fire when you’re ready.’

  Effie took a nervous breath, and squeezed the trigger. Instantly, the machine-gun chattered in her hands like some kind of awful alligator which she was attempting to hold by the tail; but the experience was strangely and darkly exhilarating. A hosepipe of bullets poured out of the muzzle and tore the row of doors to pieces; shattered panels and uprights and locks, cut holes and patterns and jagged zigzags. It was all over in a few seconds, but while it lasted Effie felt a terrible and exciting power. The belt of ammunition came to an end far too quickly, and when the machine-gun clicked silent, she got up rather too abruptly, knocking over the box on which she had been sitting, and presented herself to John Browning in a daze.

  ‘My God, Mr Browning,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what to say. I’ve never come across anything like it.’

  John Browning, his hands in his pockets, turned and strained his eyes towards the doors which Effie had been spraying so wildly. ‘It’s quite a thing, isn’t it?’ he asked her. ‘I’m glad you’re impressed. But, I’d expect you to have a fully-qualified engineer look over it before you committed yourself. There might be other machine-guns in America, far better than this one, which you’ve never even heard of.’

  ‘Are there?’ Effie asked him.

  John Browning shook his head. ‘No. This is the only one.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Effie. ‘In that case, I can make the decision myself. I’ll lend you what you want, and I’ll lend it to you on favourable terms, too.’

  John Browning offered her his arm, and she accepted it. They walked together back to the Haynes Tourer, with Gregory Wilbur II, very impressed by all the noise and the shooting, walking a few paces behind with his deerstalker on backwards. ‘Pow,’ he remarked from time to time. ‘Brrrp!’

  When they reached the car, John Browning said, ‘You’re really so sure that America will come into the war?’

  ‘You don’t think you will?’ Effie asked him.

  ‘I don’t know. I wish I could be as sure as you seem to be.’

  Effie said, I’m sure, Mr Browning. Not because I’m a Briton, with an emotional and patriotic interest in seeing Britain and her allies win; but because I’m a banker. It wouldn’t make any sense at all for the United States to let Germany succeed: there is far too much American money tied up in England and France and the other allies, and if Germany wins, the chances of that money being paid back, and all the profitable interest that goes with it, will be nil. The general public here have no conception of how terribly the war is devastating Europe; both her people and her economy. But bankers know: they have to provide the money and reckon up the costs.’

  John Browning said nothing, but looked back across the field to his machine-gun, which his assistants were dismantling and carrying back to their truck.

  Effie said, ‘America will have to go to war, Mr Browning. Whatever President Wilson is telling the public, however he’s appeasing Congress. There’s too much money at stake, regardless of principles.’

  ‘You’re very cynical, Miss Watson,’ said John Browning.

  ‘Not cynical, Mr Browning. Realistic. You’re a realist, too, aren’t you? A man who can design a gun which is capable of sawing living people in half can’t be anything else but a realist.’

  John Browning frowned, but Effie said, ‘We were shooting at old doors today, Mr Browning; but that isn’t what your gun was designed to shoot at, was it?’

  ‘No,’ John Browning admitted.

  ‘Well, then,’ said Effie, with the sun setting behind her shoulder, burning on to John Browning’s retina a stylish image of her that would hover on his eyeball long after she had left, ‘you know as well as I do that when America enters the war she will need guns like yours. Your guns. Hundreds of them. So anybody who invests their money in John Browning will not only be helping to assure the future stability of Europe, and the successful repayment of American war loans to Britain and France; but huge profits for themselves. Your guns are designed to kill people, and as far as I can see they will kill hundreds of people quite marvellously. I deplore what you do, but you are plainly the best at it, and that is why I am going to lend you anything you need.’

  John Browning stared at her, unsure of what to say.

  ‘You mentioned a quarter of a million dollars,’ she said.

  ‘Actually, I was hoping for a little more,’ said John Browning. ‘Say, $350,000?’

  Effie said, ‘I’ll lend you half a million, just to make sure that you can perfect the machine-gun as quickly as possible.’

  ‘In that case,’ said John Browning, ‘Watson’s are a bank in a million.’

  This is not a Watson’s loan,’ Effie told him. ‘I am making this loan out of my own money.’

  ‘It’s not a Watson’s loan?’

  ‘My brother wouldn’t agree that the Browning machine-gun is a suitable investment. I, fortunately for you, believe that he’s wrong.’

  John Browning hesitated for a moment, then took Effie’s hand, and kissed it.

  ‘Miss Watson,’ he said, ‘you’re a gentleman.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Effie didn’t see Dougal again until the following Wednesday: he had taken May with him to Cape Cod for a long weekend, ostensibly to talk to the inventor of a new kind of canning and sterilising machine, ‘The Willco Packer’. Effie was arranging dried flowers in her office when he came in to see her. She had been given a large corner room overlooking Broad Street, and she had already ordered a new white carpet, a modernistic desk, and a suite of elegant Bauhaus-type furniture. Gregory Wilbur II had taken her out on Tuesday afternoon to several of the best New York art galleries, and the paintings and prints she had bought were stacked against the wall, ready for hanging or refraining.

  ‘How was your weekend?’ asked Effie.

  Dougal looked rumpled, and hungover. ‘Fine. The canning machinery looks promising. The hotel wasn’t so hot. If it wasn’t the plumbing rattling, it was the bedsprings of the people upstairs.’

  ‘I thought the sound of bedsprings was an essential ingredient of illicit weekends.’

  Dougal glanced at her sharply.

  Effie said, ‘I’m thinking of looking for my own apartment. I don’t think it’s fair to expect you to put me up for ever.’

  ‘You’re welcome to stay as long as you want to. You k
now that.’

  Effie finished arranging her flowers, and stood back to admire them. ‘I know I’m welcome, Dougal, and I thank you for it. But I don’t really believe that two people in the same business should work together and live together. We’re bound to have disagreements, and it would be terrible if we had nowhere to go to get away from each other.’

  Dougal sat on the edge of her desk. ‘Disagreements? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Listen – do you think you could ask what’s-her-name your secretary, to make me some coffee? Black. My head feels like a Montgolfier balloon.’

  Effie said, ‘Of course.’ She pressed her intercom switch and said, ‘Louise, be a friend and make Mr Dougal a pot of coffee, please. Yes, the Arabica. Strong and black.’ Then she said, ‘When I say disagreements, I mean, for instance, what you’re going to say when I tell you that I’ve lent half a million dollars to Mr Browning to build a new prototype of his machine-gun. My own money, of course. Not the bank’s. But still the kind of investment we’re bound to argue about.’

  Dougal stared at her open-mouthed. ‘You’ve lent John Browning half a million dollars? Effie, you’re out of your mind! The very fast industrial panhandler you meet when you come to America, and you are a like a child giving away an ice-cream to a total stranger! Half a million dollars! I don’t believe it!’

  Effie came over, laid a hand on his shoulder, and kissed his cheek. ‘Well, you’ll just have to believe it. It’s true.’

  ‘Let me explain something to you,’ said Dougal. ‘President Wilson may privately approve of the British struggle against the Huns. He may privately say that the British are fighting the American fight, and when he sends formal complaints to Whitehall about the high-handed way in which the British Navy was blockading the Atlantic, he may privately agree that they can be filed away in the waste-paper basket and forgotten. But he was re-elected on the single principle that he has kept America out of the war. Good God, Effie, America didn’t even declare war on Germany in 1915, when the Lusitânia was sunk. And now the Germans have agreed that they won’t sink any more neutral passenger-ships, unless they offer resistance. America is not going to go to war, and that means John Browning’s ridiculous machine-gun is never going to be anything at all but a very expensive white elephant.’

  Effie was quiet for a moment. Then she said, ‘I seem to remember, a very long time ago, how you stood up at the Sunday luncheon table in Edinburgh and argued in favour of Albion motor-cars, despite what Robert said about cars being an expensive white elephant for the idle rich.’

  ‘Motor-cars were different. Everybody needs to get about.’

  ‘At the moment, Dougal, people in Europe are not so worried about getting about as they are about winning a terrible war. You’ve been living and working here for fifteen years: you haven’t seen what it’s like. I lost the man that I loved in that war, and unless it’s ended decisively, and quickly, it’s going to drag on for year after year, and each year it’s going to devour more and more young men and more and more money, until there’s nothing left in Europe but corpses and bankrupts. I’m a woman, Dougal. I don’t think there’s any glory in war and I hate the sight of guns. I fired John Browning’s machine-gun last week, and it was the most moving and the most terrible experience of my life. Imagine firing a thing like that at living men! But it has to be done, and it will be done, and my half a million dollars will help.’

  Louise, a pert young redhead in a shirtwaist blouse and a long green skirt, brought in a tray of coffee. Dougal said nothing until he had taken three or four scalding sips, and then put his cup down again.

  ‘You’ve changed, Effie. You’ve changed beyond all recognition.’

  ‘Of course I have. But so have you. Haven’t you looked at yourself lately? Instead of being energetic, you’re flabby. Instead of facing up to your responsibilities, you’re avoiding them. I think I knew when you left London that you weren’t quite the aggressive young spark that you seemed to be. Perhaps I’m being unfair. Perhaps your marriage has had something to do with it. Perhaps you would have been better off in London, rather than New York. But you’ve grown prematurely tired, Dougal. Where’s your spirit? You’re a rich and clever young man, and yet you’re talking to me about canning machinery and sneaking off for weekends with your stenographer. Where’s my adventurous brother? Where’s Dougal?’

  Dougal blew out his cheeks and drummed his fingers on the desk.

  Effie said, ‘I’m sorry to speak to you like that. You know I love you.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Dougal. He picked up his coffee-cup again, stared into it, and then put it down again. He said, ‘I wish I could have seen mother before she died.’

  ‘Has that been bothering you?’

  ‘Now and then. I always feel that I let her down, by not going back to Scotland to look after her. She shouldn’t have gone to a home, you know. Robert should never have sent her there.’

  ‘Dougal …’

  ‘It’s all right. I know what she did; and I know she was lucky not to be locked up. But I can’t help feeling guilty.’

  ‘You shouldn’t,’ said Effie, gently. ‘It wasn’t your fault at all.’

  She watched him with concern and sadness. More confidence had gone from him than she had first realised, although she couldn’t understand why. He could still be funny, still be energetic, and yet there was a hollowness about him, as if somebody were peering with uncertainty and puzzlement through two eyeholes cut in a portrait of The Laughing Cavalier.

  Perhaps the problem was complex, and Freudian, and deep. Perhaps it was nothing more than the problem which any small Scottish boy would have if he were exiled from home and obliged to play the part of the fearsome Wall Street tycoon. Dougal was one of those people who had grown up to be not a man, but an old child.

  When Dougal had gone, Effie sat down at her desk and smoked a cigarette. It was more fashionable for women who smoke in America, particularly since Alice Roosevelt had done it, in her madcap days in the White House. After she had finished the cigarette, however, Effie began to feel distinctly nauseous, and she could feel her stomach rolling over as if there were a rat in it.

  She went to the executive bathroom, and sicked up her breakfast. She hung for a long time over the lavatory bowl, feeling shaken and breathless. Then she went to the wash-basins, rinsed her mouth out, dried her face, and combed her hair in the mirror. Then Effie who looked back at her was white-faced and staring, a different Effie altogether. ‘You’ve changed, Effie,’ Dougal had told her. ‘You’ve changed beyond all recognition.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  He telephoned her a week later at the office. Louise buzzed her at her desk, and announced, in her nasal Queens’ accent, ‘There’s a Dr Schwarz?’

  ‘Put him through,’ Effie told her.

  Effie had been talking to Dan Kress, who was sitting opposite her in his grey square-shouldered suit and his prickly grey haircut like a man poured out of concrete. She asked, ‘Could you excuse me for just one minute, Mr Kress?’

  Dan Kress lifted out of his vest pocket a watch that could have been drop-forged in a Pittsburgh steelworks. ‘I’ll come back this afternoon,’ he said. ‘I have an appointment with Bill McCombs; from the Treasury.’

  ‘Come back in three minutes,’ Effie instructed him, without blinking.

  ‘But –’

  ‘Three minutes,’ said Effie.

  Dan Kress rose stiffly from his chair, and stalked out of the office. Effie heard him say something to Louise like ‘damned female Tartar’ before the bird’s-eye maple door swung closed behind him.

  Dr Schwarz said, in her ear, ‘Miss Watson?’

  ‘Yes. Good morning, Dr Schwarz.’

  ‘We’ve made all the tests, Miss Watson, and I had the result through this morning.’

  ‘Yes, Dr Schwarz?’ She was trying very hard to be calm; trying very hard to think of Dr Schwarz’s black wavy hair, and round-rimmed eye-glasses, and the woodcuts on his office wall of Summer In
The Catskills.

  Dr Schwarz said, ‘I’m afraid I have to tell you, Miss Watson –’

  Effie didn’t hear the rest, or didn’t want to. An odd kind of deafness and blindness came over her, like a brief spasm of electric shock. When she opened her eyes again, she was quite surprised to find that she was still sitting in her office, still talking on the telephone to Dr Schwarz, and that outside her window the cold grey eleven o’clock clouds were still rolling over the spires and towers of downtown Manhattan at the same cinematic speed.

  ‘I see,’ she said.

  There was a hissing silence on the telephone. Then Dr Schwarz cleared his throat, and said, There are conditions, of course, under which we could legally do something for you.’

  Effie shook her head. Dr Schwarz said, ‘Miss Watson?’

  ‘No,’ said Effie. ‘Well, at least, give me a little time to think.’

  ‘Always at your service, Miss Watson.’

  ‘Yes, Dr Schwarz. Thank you.’

  She hung up the telephone. Then she reached across the desk for the silver and onyx cigarette box which John Browning had sent her three days ago. She took out a Chesterfield, and unsteadily lit it, blowing out a long stream of smoke.

  ‘Miss Watson?’ said Louise, peering around the door.

  ‘What is it, Louise?’

  ‘Mr Kress says he must finish this meeting, because he’s due at the Treasury at eleven-thirty.’

  Effie drew in her cheeks as she sucked at her cigarette, then tapped off the ash into her astray. ‘Tell, er, tell Mr Kress that ‘I’ll – well, tell him to go ahead.’

  ‘Are you all right, Miss Watson? You look like you saw a ghost.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Effie, and realised as she said it how American she was beginning to sound. But as Louise closed the door she closed her eyes and thought to herself my God, my God, Alisdair’s baby.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  On 16 January 1917, a dark snowy Tuesday, Effie moved out of Dougal’s house on Fifth Avenue, and into her own apartment on the eighth floor of a wealthy red-brick block on East 81st Street. Untypically for her, she had decorated it in a rich, lavish, old-fashioned style; with walls of pale moiré silks and gilt rococo furniture. There were scarcely any mirrors in the apartment, and the windows were hung with elaborate lace curtains and velvet drapes, so that the whole place had an enclosed, tight, inward-looking feel about it. Even John Browning, who was one of the first to visit her there, said it makes me feel as if I’m suffocating in fabric, like one of the poor little Princes in the Tower.’