Nordenholt's Million

by J. J. Connington

  As we entered, Nordenholt excused himself for a moment. He wished to give instructions to his secretary. Some telephoning had to be done at once; and then he would be at my disposal. I heard him go into the next room.

  When I am left alone in a strange house with nothing to fill in my time, I gravitate naturally to the bookcases; so that now I mechanically moved over to the serried rows of shelves which lined one side of the room. Here at last I might get some clue to the workings of Nordenholt’s mind. Glancing along the backs of the volumes, I found that the first shelf contained only works on metaphysics and psychology. Somewhat puzzled by this selection, I passed from tier to tier, and still no other subject came in view. A rapid examination of the cases from end to end showed me that the entire library dealt with this single theme, the main bulk of the works being psychological.

  This discovery overturned in my mind several nebulous conjectures which I had begun to form as to Nordenholt’s character. What sort of a man was this, a millionaire, reputed to be one of the shrewdest financiers of the day, who stocked his study entirely with psychological works among which not a single financial book of reference was to be found? Coupled with the stark simplicity of the furniture, this clue seemed unlikely to lead me far.

  As I was pondering, the door opened and Nordenholt returned. While it was still ajar, I heard the trill of a telephone bell and a girl’s voice; then the door closed and cut off further sounds. Thus, after ten minutes in his house, I had gathered only three things about him: he was simple, almost Spartan, in his tastes; he was interested in psychology; and his secretary was a girl and not a man.

  He came forward towards me; and again I had the sensation of command in his appearance. His great height and easy movements may have accounted for it in part; but I am taller than the average myself; so that it was not entirely this. Even now I cannot analyse the feeling which he produced, not on myself alone, but upon all those with whom he came in contact. Personal magnetism may satisfy some people as an explanation; but what is personal magnetism but a name? In some inexplicable manner, Nordenholt gave the impression of a vast reservoir of pent-up force, seldom unloosed but ever ready to spring into action if required; and in these unfathomable eyes there seemed to brood an uncanny and yet not entirely unsympathetic perception which chilled me with its aloofness and nevertheless drew me to him in some way which is not clear to me even now. Under that slow and minute inspection, eye to eye, I felt all my human littleness, all my petty weaknesses exposed and weighed; but I felt also that behind this unrelenting scrutiny there was a depth of understanding which struck an even balance and saved me from contempt. I can put it no better than that.

  He motioned me to a chair and took another himself. For a few moments he remained silent; and when he spoke I was struck by the change in his tone. At the meeting, he had spoken decisively, almost bitterly at times; but now a ring of sadness entered into that great musical voice.

  “I wonder, Flint,” he said, “I wonder if you understand what we have taken in hand to-day? I doubt if any of us see where all this is leading us. I see the vague outlines of it before us; but beyond a certain point one cannot go.”

  He paused, deep in thought for a few seconds; then, as though waking suddenly to life again, offered me a cigar and took one himself. When he spoke again, it was in a different tone.

  “Perhaps you wonder why I picked you out—of course it was I who got you invited to that meeting; I wanted to look you over there before making up my mind about you. Well, I have means of knowing about people; and you struck me as the man I needed in this work. I’ve been watching you for some years, Flint; ever since you made your mark, in fact. You aren’t one of my young men—the ones they call ‘Nordenholt’s gang,’ I believe—but you are of my kind; and I knew that I could get you if I wanted you for something big.”

  In any other man this would have struck me as insolence; but Nordenholt had already established such an influence over me that I felt flattered rather than ruffled by this calm assumption on his part.

  “But in some ways it’s a disadvantage now that we didn’t come together earlier,” he continued. “You remember Nelson and his captains—the band of brothers? Nothing can be accomplished on a grand scale without that feeling; and possibly I have left it until too late to get into touch with you. It depends on yourself, Flint. I know you, possibly as well as you know yourself; but you know nothing of me. With my young men,” and a tinge of pride came into his voice, “with my young men, that difficulty doesn’t arise. They know me as well as anyone can—well enough, at any rate, for us to work together for a common object, no matter how big the stake may be. But you, Flint, represent a foreign mind in the machine. I want you to understand some things; in fact, it’s essential that you should see the lines on which I work; for otherwise we shall be at cross-purposes. I wonder how it can be done?”

  He leaned back in his chair and smoked silently for a few minutes. I said nothing; for I was quite content to await whatever he had to put into words. I only wondered what form it would take. When he broke the silence, it was on quite unexpected lines. He looked at his watch.

  “Three hours yet before we can do anything further, I might as well spend part of it on this; and possibly I can give you an idea of my outlook on things which will help you when we are working together up North.

  “When I was quite a child, Flint, I used to take a certain delight in doing things which had an element of risk in them—physical risk, I mean. I liked to climb difficult trees, to work my way out on to dangerous bits of roof, to walk across tree-trunks spanning streams, and so forth. There’s that element of risk at the back of all real enjoyment, to my mind. It needn’t be physical risk necessarily, though there you have it in perhaps its most acute aspect; but at the root of a gamble of any sort where the stakes are high you find this factor lying, whether it is noticeable or not.

  “One of my earliest experiences in that direction took the form of walking along a slippery wall which was high enough to make a fall from it a serious matter. I mastered the art of keeping on the wall to perfection; and then, finding that pall upon me, I endeavoured to complicate it by jumping across the gap made by a gateway. It was an easy distance: I proved that to myself by practising on the ground from a standing take-off. And the nature of the wall offered no particular difficulty, for I tested myself in jumping a similar gap between two slippery tree-trunks laid end to end. Yet when I came to the actual gap in the wall, my muscles simply refused to obey me; and time after time I drew back involuntarily from the spring.

  “I was an introspective child; and this puzzled me. I knew that I could accomplish the feat with ease; and yet something prevented my attempting it. I fell to analysing my sensations and tracing down the various factors in the case; and, of course, it was not long until I came to the crucial point. Does this bore you? I am sorry if it does, but you’ll see the point of it by and by.”

  While he had been speaking, I had had a most curious impression. His argument, whatever it might be, was evidently addressed to me; and yet all through it I had the feeling that it was not altogether to me that he was talking. In some way I gathered the idea that while he spoke to me his mind was working upon another line, testing and re-testing some chain of reasoning which was illustrated by his anecdote; so that while I looked upon one aspect of it he was scanning the same facts from a totally different point of view and reading into them something which I was not intended to grasp.

  “Obviously, the crux of the matter was the height of the wall and the fear of hurting myself severely if I missed my leap,” he continued. “Once I had discovered that—and of course it took much less time to do so than it takes now to explain the case—I set about another trial. I made up my mind that I would think nothing of the chance of slipping, and that this time I would accomplish the feat with ease. Yet once more I failed to bring my body up to the effort. Something stronger than my consciousness was at work; and it defeated me.”

  H
e smiled sardonically at some memory or other.

  “I practised jumping along a marked portion of the wall where it was lower; and I found that I could accomplish the distance with ease. Whereupon my childish mind formulated the problem in this way; and I believe that it was correct in doing so. The ultimate factor in the thing was the fear of a damaging fall. Within limits, I was prepared to take the risk; as had been shown by the success on the lower parts of the wall. But at the high place beside the gateway, my resolution had given way under a strain of nervousness. And at once there came into my mind the conception of a breaking-strain. Up to a certain tension, my conscious mind worked perfectly; but, beyond that, there was a complete collapse. Something had snapped under the strain. I may say that I finally accomplished the leap successfully; I simply wouldn’t allow myself to be beaten in a thing I knew I could do.”

  He halted for a moment as though this marked a turning-point in his thoughts.

  “This idea of the breaking-strain remained fixed in my child’s mind, however; and I used to amuse myself by conjecturing all sorts of hypothetical cases in which it played a part. It finally grew to be a sort of mild obsession with me, and I would ask myself continually: “Why did So-and-so do this rather than that?” and would then set to work to discover the factors at the back of his actions and the tension-snap which had driven him into something which was unexpected from his normal line of conduct.

  “You can understand, Flint, how this practice grew upon me. It is the most interesting thing in the world; and the materials for applying it are everywhere about us in our everyday life. I extracted endless amusement from it; and as I grew up into boyhood I found its fascination greater than ever. I took a never-failing interest in probing at the hidden springs of conduct and trying to establish these breaking-strains in the people before me.

  “Then, as I grew older, I discovered the Law Courts. There you see the philosophy of the breaking-strain brought into touch with real life in a practical form. I used to go and watch some well-known barrister handling a hostile witness; and suddenly I understood that all these men were merely fumbling empirically after the thing that I had studied from my earliest days. What does a barrister want to do with a hostile witness? To break him down, to throw him out of his normal line of thought and then to fish among the dislocated machinery for something which suits his own case. It afforded me endless interest to follow the methods of each different cross-examiner. I learned a great deal in the Courts; and I came away from them convinced that I had found something of more than mere academic interest. This breaking-strain question was one which could be applied to affairs of the greatest practical importance. It was actually so applied in law cases. Why not utilise it in other directions also?”

  I found him watching me keenly to see if I followed his line of thought. After a moment, he went on:

  “It sounds so obvious now, Flint; but I believe that I alone saw it as a scientific problem. Your blackmailer, your poker-sharp, all those types of mind had been working on the thing in a crude way; but to me it appeared from a different angle. Everyone else had looked on it in the form of special cases, particular men who had to be swayed by particular motives. I began as a youth where they left off. I spent some years on it, Flint, examining it in all its bearings; and finally I evolved a system of classification which enabled me to approach any specific case along general lines. I can’t go into that now; but it suddenly gave me an insight into motives and actions such as I doubt if anyone ever had before.”

  He paused and watched the smoke curling up from his cigar. Again he seemed to be deep in the consideration of some problem connected with and yet alien to what he had been saying. For a time he was lost in thought; and I waited to hear the rest of the story.

  “Well, Flint,” he went on at last, “it certainly seemed on the face of it to be a very useless accomplishment from the practical point of view; from the standpoint of mere cash, I mean. And yet, it still fascinated me. When I was quite a young man I determined to go to Canada and take up lumber. I was an orphan; there was nothing to keep me in this country, for I had no near relations; and I felt that it might do me good to cut loose from things here and go away into the woods for a time. I had enough capital to start in a small way; so I went. My ideas of the lumber-trade were vague at the time. If I’d known what it was, I doubt if I should have touched it.

  “At first sight, it looked a hopeless venture. I knew nothing of the trade; I was a youngster then; I had had no training in financial operations. Failure seemed to be the only outcome; and the men on the spot laughed at me. I simply would not admit that I was beaten at the start; and everything drove me on against my better judgment. And I had one tremendous asset. I knew men.

  “I knew men better than anyone else out there. I never made a mistake in my choice. I collected a few good men at the start to help me; and through them I gathered others almost as good. In a year I had made progress; in two years I was a success; and very soon I became somebody to reckon with. And through it all, Flint, I knew practically nothing about the actual trade. That was only a tool in my hands. What I dealt in was men and men’s minds. I could gauge a man’s capacity to a hair; and I picked my managers and foremen from the very best. They were glad to come to me, somehow. They felt I understood them; and no inefficients were comfortable with me. I never had to discharge them; they simply went of their own accord. I left everything to my staff, for I knew them thoroughly and gauged their capacities to a degree. And because I knew them I found the right place for each man; so that the work went forward with perfect smoothness and efficiency. Before I had been five years there I was on the road to being a rich man.”

  His tone expressed no satisfaction. It was clear that I was not expected to admire his talents.

  “Then, suddenly, came the discovery of platinum on a large scale in the neighbourhood of my district. You know what that meant; but you must remember that in those days it was a very different matter from now. It was like the Yukon gold rush in some of its aspects. The place swarmed with prospectors, mostly men of no education, whose main object was to get as much as they could in a hurry and then go elsewhere to spend the money the platinum brought them. Meanwhile, the platinum market was convulsed, and the price swayed to and fro from day to day. You must remember that in those times the thing was in the hands of a very few men; for the supply was limited. The Canadian mines overthrew the nicely-adjusted balance of the market and everything suffered in consequence; for the uses of platinum directly or indirectly spread over a very large field of human industry.”

  That part of his history was more or less familiar to me, but I did not interrupt.

  “One day it occurred to me that here in Canada we had a case parallel to the state of affairs in the Diamond Fields before the Kimberley amalgamation. Why not repeat Cecil Rhodes’s methods? Just as he regulated the price of diamonds, I could regulate the price of platinum if I could get control of the Canadian mines, for they were by far the most important in the world.

  “Again, I knew nothing of platinum, just as I had known nothing of lumber; but I was able to pay for the best advice, to pay for secrecy as well; and to judge the experts, I had my knowledge of men to help me. I got the best men, I chose only men whom my insight enabled me to pick out; and I began to buy up claims quietly under their guidance. Here again psychology came in. I could tell at a glance when a man was a ‘quitter’ and when a miner would refuse to sell. I could gauge almost to a sovereign the price that would prove the breaking-strain for any particular owner. I can’t tell you how it is done; it is partly inborn, perhaps, partly acquired; but I know that my knowledge is quite incommunicable.

  “To make a long story short, I had acquired a very fair percentage of the valuable ground when suddenly I discovered that five other men had been struck with the same idea; and that prices were rising beyond anything I could hope to pay. It was a case for amalgamation; but I did not see my way through it quite so simply. Two of them I kne
w to be honest. One of them I could not trust, although he had hitherto never shown any signs of crookedness; but I knew his breaking-strain, and I knew also that the temptations to which he would be exposed under any amalgamation scheme would be too great for him. He had to be eliminated. The other two were weak men who could be dealt with easily enough. I needn’t give you the details. I approached the two honest men, combined with them, and with the joint capital of the three of us I bought out the third competitor. The other two we dealt with separately, buying out the one and taking the other in along with us. My partners trusted me with the negotiations, again because I knew men and their motives.

  “And that was how I made my first million. Remember I knew nothing about the materials I had handled in the making of it. I never took the slightest interest in the things themselves—and I took very little interest in the money either, for my tastes are simple. What did interest me was the psychology of the thing, the probing among the springs and levers of men’s minds, and the working out of all the complex strains and stresses which form the background of our reason and our emotions. The million was a mere by-product of the process.

  “But with the million there came another interest. Up to that time I had applied my methods to individual cases; but it struck me, after the strain of the amalgamation negotiations was over, that my generalisations were capable of a wider application. I took up the study of political affairs over here; and I found that my principles enabled me to gauge the psychology of masses even more easily than those of individuals. As a practical test, I stood for Parliament; and got elected without any difficulty. Of course one of the Parties was glad to have me—a millionaire isn’t likely to go a-begging at their door for long—but you may remember that I won that election by my own methods. The Party machines tried to copy them, of course, at a later date; but they failed hopelessly because they were merely repeating mechanically some operations which I had designed for a special case.