Upton Sinclair - Dragons’s teeth

"I would like very much to try the experiment," said Zaharoff. "When do you think it could be arranged?"

"I will have to consult my mother and my stepfather. The yacht is on the way from Cannes to Bremen, and the plan is to go from there to America and return in the autumn. If you go to Monte Carlo next winter, we could bring Madame over to you."

"That is a long time to wait. Would it not be possible for me to bring her here for at least a trial? Perhaps the yacht may be stopping in the Channel?"

"We expect to stop on the English coast, perhaps at Portsmouth or Dover."

"If so, I would gladly send someone to England to bring her to me. I would expect to pay her, you understand."

"There is no need of that. We are taking care of her, and she is satisfied, so it would be better not to raise the question."

"This might mean a great deal to me, Lanny. If I thought that I was in contact with my wife, and that I had some chance of seeing her again, it would give me more happiness than anything I can think of." There was a pause, as if a retired munitions king needed a violent effort to voice such feelings. "I have met no one in any way approaching her. You have heard, perhaps, that I waited thirty-four years to marry her, and then she was spared to me barely eighteen months."

Lanny knew that Zaharoff and the duquesa had been living together during all those thirty-four years; but this was not to be mentioned. A young free lance could mention casually that he had had an came, but the richest man in Europe had to look out for chantage and scandal-mongers—especially when the lady’s insane husband had been a cousin to the King of Spain!

"If you want to make a convincing test," continued Lanny, "it would be better not to let Madame Zyszynski know whom she is to meet. She rarely asks questions, either before or after a sitting. She will say: Did you get good results? and if you tell her: Very good, she is satisfied. I should advise meeting her in some hotel room, with nothing to give her any clue."

"Listen, my boy," said the old man, with more eagerness than Lanny had ever seen him display in the sixteen years of their acquaintance, "if you will make it possible for me to see this woman in the next few days, I will come to any place on the French coast that you name."

"In that case I think I can promise to arrange it. I am to fly and join the yacht at Lisbon, and as soon as I can set a date, I will telegraph you. In the meantime, say nothing, and my father and I will be the only persons in the secret. I will tell my mother that I have a friend who wants to make a private test; and to Madame I won’t say even that."

To this long conversation Robbie Budd had listened in silence. He didn’t believe in a hereafter, but he believed in giving the old spider, the old gray wolf, the old devil, whatever would entertain him and put him under obligations to the Budd family. When they rose to leave, Zaharoff turned to him and said: "About those shares: would you like me to see if some of my old-time associates would be interested in them?"

"Certainly, Sir Basil."

"If you will send me the necessary data concerning the company—"

"I have the whole set-up with me." Robbie pointed to his briefcase. "I have thirty-five thousand shares at my disposal."

"Are you prepared to put a price on them?"

"We are asking a hundred and twenty dollars a share. That represents exactly the amount of the investment."

"But you have had generous profits, have you not?"

"Not excessive, in view of the period of time and the work that I have put in on it."

"People are glad to get back the half of their investment these days, Mr. Budd."

"Surely not in oil, Sir Basil."

"Well, leave the documents with me, and I’ll see what I can do and let you hear in the next few days."

They took their leave; and in their car returning to Paris, Robbie said: "Son, that was an inspiration! How did you think of it?"

"Well, it happened, and I thought he’d want to know."

"That business about the tulips really happened?"

"Of course."

"It was certainly most convenient. If that woman can convince him that the duquesa is sending him messages, there’s nothing he won’t do. We may get our price."

Lanny well knew that his father wasn’t very sensitive when he was on the trail of a business deal; but then, neither is a spider, a wolf, or a devil. "I hope you do," he said.

"He means to buy the shares himself," continued Robbie. "It will take a lot of bargaining. Don’t let him see too much of the woman until he pays up."

"The more he sees, the more he may want," countered the son.

"Yes, but suppose he buys her away from you entirely?"

"That’s a chance we have to take, I suppose."

"My guess is he won’t be able to believe that the thing is on the level. If he gets results, he’ll be sure you told the woman in advance."

"Well," said the young idealist, "he’ll be punishing his own sins. Goethe has a saying that all guilt avenges itself upon earth."

But Robbie wasn’t any more interested in spirituality than he was in spirits. "If I can swing this deal, I’ll be able to pay off the notes that I gave you and Beauty and Marceline."

"You don’t have to worry about those notes, Robbie. We aren’t suffering."

"All the same, it’s not pleasant to know that I took the money which you had got by selling Marcel’s paintings."

"If it hadn’t been for you," said the young philosopher, "I wouldn’t have been here, Beauty would have married some third-rate painter in Montmartre, and Marceline wouldn’t have been traveling about in a private yacht. I have pointed that out to them."

"All the same," said Robbie, "I came over here to sell those shares. Let’s get as much of the old rascal’s money as we can."

Lanny had made jokes about the firm of "R and R." In the days when his mother and Bess had been trying to find him a wife, there had been a firm of "B and B." Now he said: "We’ll have a Z and Z. "

Back in Paris Lanny might have sat in at a conference and learned about the rearmament plans of the Rumanian government; but he had an engagement with Zoltan Kertezsi to visit the Salon and discuss the state of the picture market. The blond Hungarian was one of those happy people who never look a day older; always he had just discovered something new and exciting in the art world, always he wanted to tell you about it with a swift flow of words, and always his rebellious hair and fair mustache seemed to be sharing in his gestures. There wasn’t anything first rate in the Salon, he reported, but there was a young Russian genius, Alexander Jacovleff, being shown at one of the galleries; a truly great draftsman, and Lanny must come and have a look right away. Also, Zoltan had come upon a discovery, a set of Blake water-color drawings which had been found in an old box in a manor-house in Surrey; they were genuine, and still fresh in color; nobody else on earth could have done such angels and devils; doubtless they had been colored by Blake’s wife, but that was true of many Blakes. They ought to fetch at least a thousand pounds apiece

Immediately Lanny began running over in his mind the names of persons who might be interested in such a treasure trove. It wasn’t only because Zoltan would pay him half the commission; it was because it was a game that he had learned to play. No use for Irma to object, no use to think that the money she deposited to his account would ever bring him the same thrills as he got from putting through a deal.

"We shan’t be able to get what we used to," said the friend. "You’d be astonished the way prices are being cut."

No matter; the pictures were just as beautiful, and if you kept your tastes simple, you could live and enjoy them. But the dealers who had loaded themselves up were going to have trouble paying their high rents; and the poor devils who did the painting would wander around with their canvases under their arms, and set them up in the windows of tobacco-shops and every sort of place, coming back two or three times a day and gazing at them wistfully, hop­ing that this might cause some passer-by to stop and take an interest.