Just a word about the man on whom we were going to call. His name was a synonym for enormous wealth. Mr. Kirsty was one of those Americans who, by the ruthless exploitation of preempted natural resources and of basic inventions which were useless to their inventors because they lacked the capital to exploit them had obtained a position of power and influence, such that for a while their say-so counted in certain matters for more than the voice of the commonwealth. I met a number of them in my peregrinations; and though I did not see
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them at their best -- nor at their worst -- I found that the interview which I am going to describe was typical in one respect: it shows their personal insignificance. We are apt, in our thoughts, to associate immense wealth with some nearly superhuman mental endowment. I found them to be middle-class people, in most things of no greater intelligence than the next one, and remarkable only by a certain blind, unfaltering calculation of what is to their profit. Morally they seemed neither better nor worse than the average. They were adept in seeing their advantage, and very indifferent to the higher ethics in going after it, just as most of us are, on a smaller scale. Yet, being only average people, with an average conscience, and by no means Napoleons, they had a sore soul; at heart they could not understand, nor be reconciled to, their own success. They attributed it to some form of genius before which they themselves stood in awe as if it were something imposed upon them by destiny. With most of them there was added to this a certain uneasiness which drove them to devoting millions to what they considered worthy causes enterprises which in the opinion of any sane person should be exclusively reserved to the state. During the time that has elapsed since these things happened the Mr. Kirstys have multiplied and fattened to an amazing degree; large-scale " Philanthropy" has become the fashion among multi-millionaires. I suppose, John's "Repent ye" has penetrated even the gates of gold.
When, on the decisive morning, Mr. Williams appeared for breakfast, he astonished me by the elaborate toilette he had made. He was visibly nervous and tried to hide the fact under an all-embracing, artificial jocularity. It reminded me of Mr. Tinker's nervous tension when he closed the sale to the old Irish lady. As for Mr. Williams' appearance, only a slang-word will describe it briefly: he was "dolled-up"; another slang-word will describe his frame of mind: "he was keyed up to a high pitch." Under his jocularity I sensed an irritability which was always on
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the point of eruption. I could not but marvel at my own, calmly observant mood.
A cab was waiting outside-cars were still rare, at the time and none too reliable. Watch in hand, Mr. Williams paced the lobby, stooping now and then to finger the Gladstone bag in which he carried his materials. I could not help contrasting the calm insolence in his tone when he had spoken to Mr. Kirsty over the telephone with his nervous excitement before the battle. After all there was nothing at stake beyond a commission!
At last he judged that the moment had come; picking up his bag, he nearly snarled, "Time; come on."
A few minutes later the cab stopped in front of a tall office building. We shot up to one of the upper floors.
The master of the forge seemed to roost like a bird of prey above that vast army of workers who directed the activities at the mills.
A stern-looking, simply but expensively dressed young lady of thirty received us with a questioning glance when we left the elevator and stepped into a large reception room.
Mr. Williams flicked a calling card out of his vest-pocket and said, "Mr. Kirsty expects us. I hope he is disengaged."
The young lady looked at a clock in the southern wall, between two high windows. My eyes followed hers. It was exactly ten o'clock.
The view from the windows was superb. It flew out over a veritable sea of roofs to the Monongahela River and rested beyond on the southern bank.
"If you will wait a moment," she said and turned to a tall, distinguished-looking young man who, some papers in his hand, entered the room from the east.
He glanced at the card and nodded.
The lady made a motion inviting us to follow her. We entered a long and wide corridor in which three or four more young ladies were sitting at small desks from which they operated little gates barring the way. I could not
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suppress a smile and an ironical thought: "Royalty is hedged about with guards!" We passed them all, the presence of our guide acting as an "Open, Sesame."
Then we entered the presence.
The room was large, fitted with rose-mahogany bookcases which completely concealed the walls. Two leather reclining chairs offered the only sitting accommodation, besides one straight-backed chair by the side of, and a swivel-chair behind, the huge, flat-topped desk in the centre of the room. The floor was covered with a deepnapped, dark-red carpet.
Behind the desk, a small, rotund man was busy. I search my brain in vain for a word to describe his activity. What he was doing seemed commonplace enough. He was bending down and impatiently opening drawer after drawer and pushing them shut again, as if searching for something that had been mislaid. But when he pushed the drawers back into place, he did it with such unnecessary energy that his movements looked as if he were, monkey-fashion, furiously jumping up and down.
Then I saw his pale, flat-featured face with the small, knob-like nose, framed in carefully brushed, perfumed, and yet straggling grey Whiskers.
The expensive clothes, though freshly pressed, were hanging about him as if carelessly dropped in a pile and by chance caught up on something resembling the ill-shaped figure of a man. There was something shaggy about his appearance. That was a multi-millionaire.
When he raised himself, he shot a glance at the young lady who had been standing in front of us, in the attitude of quiet, expectant deference.
She stepped forward and, without a word, laid our cards on the desk before him.
He nodded and bent down again, without paying the slightest attention to us.
The young lady left the room.
Mr. Williams, with an air of self-possessed insolence, stepped up to the desk, put his bag on the straight-backed
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chair, opened it and straightened. He looked back at me and winked.
I, too, approached; we waited.
At last Mr. Kirsty seemed to give up his search. He pulled his watch from his vest-pocket -- it did not come quite readily, and I could hardly keep from smiling at his impatient jerk. Then we heard his singularly high-pitched, querulous voice.
"Well," he said, "I can give you just five minutes."
But Williams cut in with a note of indignant protest. "Mr. Kirsty," he said, "we have come from New York in order to give you the privilege of acquiring one of the remaining four sets of a work which some of your friends considered it an honour to possess."
"Well, what is it?" asked Mr. Kirsty ill-humouredly.
"If you cannot devote more than five minutes to a proposition like ours," Mr. Williams continued, "I prefer to take the next train home."
"Well, well," Mr. Kirsty said as if speaking to a child, but still with that querulous note, "you know I am a very busy man."
"So am I," Mr. Williams rejoined; "I cannot afford deliberately to waste five minutes of my time and energy."
"How if you saw my secretary?" Mr. Kirsty tried to evade.
"Your secretary," Mr. William said, this time with a smile and a bow, "unfortunately is not on the list of persons to whom we offer this work."
No smile on Mr. Kirsty's face betrayed the conquest which these words had made. He dropped into his swivelchair and made a motion to Mr. Williams to be seated; to me no attention was paid.
"It is not necessary, of course," Mr. Williams began, "to speak of the work itself. The names of the men who are responsible for it are sufficient."
He laid down a list of the authors.
"I will briefly explain how it is got up. The text is printed in one thousand copies, strictly limited. The sets
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are numbered. When the work appeared, there was the natural rush upon it. We held on to the first impressions and are, therefore, able to offer you number eight in a binding selected by yourself. It goes without saying that hand-made paper is used; the illustrations are handpainted, the print a beautiful Aldine type with handilluminated capitals at the beginning of each chapter."
Sample pages were spread out in front of the prospect.
"As to the bindings, no two sets, and in a set no two volumes are bound alike. The higher numbers are bound in morocco; about twenty sets were held for parchment bindings, gold-embossed. Each binding is an exact reproduction of some famous book-cover from the middleages, copied by artists whom we have sent abroad expressly for this work."
He spread out a number of cuts.
"These are the photographs of the bindings which are available. As I said, four sets remain unsold. We shall take pleasure in binding the set which we are holding for you, number eight, in whatever covers you may select."
Mr. Kirsty did not touch the sheets; but he shot an occasional glance at them while he listened.
"Nine hundred and ninety-six sets have been disposed of," Mr. Williams went on. "I have a complete list of the subscribers before me. The buyers of the higher numbers would, of course, not interest you. Here is the list of the one hundred first sets with the names of their holders."
For the first time Mr. Kirsty reached out for what was offered to his inspection. He scanned the list not without interest. "These people," he said in his high-pitched voice which lost its querulous note, "you say have the set? An interesting list. How long have the books been on the market?"
"Six months, I should say," Mr. Williams replied.
"How is it," Mr. Kirsty complained, the querulous note creeping back into his accents, "that I receive this offer only after the greater number of the sets have been sold?"
"Your own fault, Mr. Kirsty," smiled Mr. Williams in
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an amiable tone; "we wrote you about it before number one was off the press. It is our rule never to call except on appointment. At the same time. you see, we were holding this set for you because we knew you for a connoisseur and a lover of rare prints. The moment we received your card we also made bold to reserve for you what we considered the finest of all our bindings. If I may offer a suggestion on a point or two, I shall lay out for your approval what Mr. Wilbur and myself were thinking of when we had your call."
He laid out a set of twenty photographs which covered the desk.
Mr. Kirsty meanwhile went back once more to a careful scrutiny of the list of subscribers. The thought in his mind, though no doubt it remained unconscious, interpreted itself to me in about these terms, "It is a comfort, after all, if I am going to be taken in, to be in such company. I wonder whether this list is according to facts? There is the name of my friend, Mrs. So-and-so. I might call her up over the wire; but it is not necessary, these fellows know that I might do that; they would not dare to put her name down unless she had bought the books."
What he said, was, "How about the price?"
"Fourteen," Mr. Williams replied with an accent of apology as if ashamed that it was not more. "You see," he went on, "the cost is, of course, quite out of proportion to the intrinsic and the rarity value of the set. We are not dealers. We are craftsmen. We do not raise the price according to the demand. We could actually make money by selling to speculators. That is not our way of doing business."
"You say this set will have to be bound for me?" Mr. Kirsty asked; and at last he was actually looking at the photographs.
"Yes," Mr. Williams replied, laying down an order blank.
Mr. Kirsty got to his feet. "Well," he said, once more in his querulous and impatient tone, and beginning
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to work at his drawers again, "I suppose it is all right. Send the set along. What is this?" he added, picking up the order sheet and glancing at it. He handed it back to Mr. Williams. "My word is as good as my bond," he said, not without the punctilio of the small mind.
"Of course," Mr. Williams agreed with a bow of apology.
He quickly gathered his belongings, except the photographs and the partial list of subscribers which Mr. Kirsty seemed to hang on to; bowed once more, and left the office, with me following on his heels.
The cab was waiting. The interview had taken half an hour. It had filled me with scruples and puzzling thoughts. But I could see at a glance that Mr. Williams was not in a mood to resolve my difficulties. He was in that state of complete relaxation which I had observed once before, though to a lesser degree, in Mr. Tinker. When we got back to the hotel, he hurried up to his room and threw himself on a lounge.
At dinner-time, however, I could not repress one question.
"How is it," I asked, "that the house is still engaging agents when only four more sets remain to be sold?"
Mr. Williams gave me a look of dumbfounded surprise and then laughed for a moment so uproariously that I felt the colour rising to the roots of my hair.
Then he turned to the waiter and ordered a glass of Milk. When the waiter brought it, he pushed it over to me. "Want a bottle," he asked, "with nipple attached?"
I reined in my anger. Mr. Williams was beneath my resentment.
When we boarded the night-train, Mr. Williams was in a state of complete intoxication.