_ PART II. EIGHT YEARS LATER
CHAPTER XIV. THE PLANNING OF CAMPAIGN
Nathaniel Hellbeam sat ominously calm and unruffled while Elas Peterman told of his meeting with Bull Sternford. He gave no sign whatever. There was just the flicker of a smile of appreciation of Bull's effrontery when he heard of his response to Peterman's invitation to sell. That alone of the whole story seemed to afford him interest. For the rest, it had only been the sort of thing he expected.
He waited until the other had finished. Then he stirred in his chair. It was an expression of relief that his long, silent sitting had ended.
"So," he said. "We do not buy him. No. We smash him."
There was obvious satisfaction that the more peaceful process was to be set aside.
He sat blinking at his subordinate in the fashion of a man who is thinking hard, and has no interest in the object upon which he is gazing.
"It is as I think--all the time," he said at last. "That is all right. I make no cry out. It is easy to fight. I would fight always with an enemy. It is good. Now my friend, you have acted so. You bring the man from Sachigo to tell you to go to hell. Eh? Well you have thought much? You have planned for the fight? How is it you make this fight?"
Elas was standing before the desk. He had, yielded his place to this man who was master of the Skandinavia. Now he looked down at the square-headed creature with his gross, squat body. It was a figure and face bristling with venom and purpose; and somehow he was conscious of a sudden lack of his usual assurance.
"Oh, yes," he replied thoughtfully. "I've planned--sure. But I guess I'm in the dark a bit. It's going to cost a deal. It's not going to be easy. You were ready to buy. It was not necessarily to be the Skandinavia who bought. Well, are you--going to vote the credit for this fight?" He smiled uncertainly. "And to what extent?"
"The limit. Go on."
Peterman nodded.
"There's no commercial enterprise that can stand idleness. His work must stop. His--"
"That is the A.B.C. of it."
There was sharp impatience in the financier's biting tone.
"Just so. It is the A.B.C. of it."
Hellbeam set back in his chair. He clasped his hands across his stomach.
"I will tell you," he said, a wicked smile lighting his deep-set eyes, his cheeks rounding themselves in his satisfaction. "His work will stop. His mill is far away. There is no protection from attack except that which he can set up himself. He is going away. He will have eighteen hundred miles of water between him and his mill. It should be easy with a good plan and all the money. Listen.
"His work must stop. How? There are ways. His mill may burn. His forests may burn. His men may revolt. They may refuse to work for him. All, or any of these things may serve. There are men at all times ready to carry out these things. You can tell them, or you need not, the way they must act." He shook his head. "You say to them his work must stop; and you pay them more than he can pay them. So his work will stop. That is so? Yes? Very well. There is ha'f a million dollars that will pay for his work to stop. I say that."
Peterman was startled. He had not been prepared for so sweeping a proposal. He had understood that the man had been prepared to stand at almost nothing in his desire to achieve some end, the nature of which still remained somewhat obscure to him. For all his own lack of scruple in his dealings with those who offended, the calm, fiendish purpose of this man shocked him not a little.
He took the chair usually occupied by his visitors.
"You will pay ha'f a million dollars for this thing?" he demanded, to re-assure himself.
Self-satisfaction looked out of the eyes of the man behind the desk.
"More--if necessary."
"By God! You must hate this boy, Sternford."
Peterman's feelings had broken from under his control.
"Sternford? Psha! It is not Sternford. No."
The smile had gone from Hellbeam's eyes. They were fiercely burning. They were the hot, passionate eyes of a man obsessed, of a man possessed of a monomania. Peterman, watching, beheld the sudden change in him. He shrank before the insanity he had so deeply probed.
Hellbeam sat forward in his chair. His forearms were resting on the desk, and his hands were clenched so that the finger-nails almost cut into the flesh of their palms. His massive face was flushed, and the coarse veins at his temples stood out like cords.
"Here, I tell you," he cried gutturally, returning in his fury to the native Teuton in him. "Can you hate--yes? Have you known hate? Eh? No. You the white liver have. You cannot hate. It is not in you. Oh, no. It is for me. Yes. It has been so for years. And I tell you it is the only thing in life. Woman? No. I have known them. They mean little. They are a pleasure that passes. Money? What is it when you play the market as you choose? The day comes when you can help yourself. And you no longer desire so to do. Hate? That lives. That feeds on body and brain. That consumes till there is only a dead carcase left. Ah! Hate is for the lifetime. It can leave all those others as nothing. In it there is joy, despair, all the time, every hour of life."
He held up one hand and opened his fingers. Then he slowly closed them with a curious expressive movement of ruthless destruction.
"You hate and you think. You see your vengeance in operation. You see him there in your hand; and you see the blood sweat as you squeeze and crush out the life that has offended. Man, it is a joy that never leaves you till you accomplish this thing. Then, after, you have the memory. And while you think, even though he is dead, smashed in your grip, he still suffers as you think. Oh, yes."
"And you hate--that way?"
A feeling of sudden fear had taken possession of Peterman. This gross, squat man had become something terrible to him.
"Ja!"
The Teuton leapt in the furious emphasis hurled.
"Oh, ja! I hate. I tell you of it."
The man with the insane eyes picked up a pen. He turned it about in his fingers. Then, suddenly, but slowly, the fingers began to break it. The wood split under their pressure, and the pieces littered the table. He gazed at them for a moment. Then one hand clenched and came down with a crash on the blotting pad. Then he sat back in his chair again, with his cruel eyes gazing straight out at the window opposite.
"It is years now. Oh, yes." A deep breath escaped from between the man's coarse lips. "I ruled the markets. I ruled them so that they obeyed me. I was the money power of this continent. I did as I chose. So I thought. Then he came. This man. He did not disturb me. Oh, no. I slept good all the time. Then I woke. I woke to find I was beaten of ten million dollars; and that Wall Street, the markets of the world, were laughing that this schoolmaster, this fool Scotsman from over the water, had picked my pocket while I slept. It was not the money. It was the laugh. And he got away. Oh, yes. I tell it now. The market knew of it then. They laughed. How they laughed. So I sat and thought. I had all. There was nothing more to have. And then I learned to hate."
The narrowed eyes came back to the face of the man beside the desk. There was a sharp intake of breath.
"This mill, this Sachigo, was built out of my money. And the man who built it was the man who robbed me while I slept."
A world of fierce bitterness lay in the final words, and the man listening realised the enormity of the offence, as this man saw it. But he was left puzzled.
"But you would have--bought this Sachigo?" he said, said.
Hellbeam's eyes were again turned to the window.
"Oh, yes," he said. "I would have bought. It would bring me to meet this man. It is that I ask. That only. My hands would close upon him. And I would see the blood sweat of his heart ooze under them."
Hellbeam had finished. Peterman understood that. The passion had passed out of his eyes and the veins of his forehead were no longer distended. He remained gazing at the window.
For some moments the younger man made no attempt to intrude further. He had little desire to, anyway. Without scruple himself, he still found little pleasure in probing the heart of this man, who was so powerful in his own destiny. That which he had witnessed had served only to show him the delicacy of his own position. He knew that the story had been told for one reason only. It was to convince him, for the sake of his own wellbeing in the Skandinavia, that he must make no mistake in the warfare he must wage against the people of Sachigo. It was for him to wage the battle with every faculty that was in him; and any failure of his would mean disaster for himself. This was no commercial warfare. It was the insane purpose of a monomaniac.
In those silent moments Elas Peterman thought with a rapidity inspired by the urgency he felt to be driving him. And the fertility of his imagination served him unfailingly. Oh yes. Necessity was driving. But so, too, was his own personal feelings. He saw in the position that this man had revealed an advantage to himself he had never looked for. With the necessary money forthcoming, and no directors to concern himself with, literally a free hand, he could employ a power which, in these days of unrest and hatred between capital and labour, would be well-nigh overwhelming. The morality of it, the ultimate consequence of it mattered nothing. The smashing of Sachigo would mean the smashing of Bull Sternford. And he saw a way whereby the smashing of Bull Sternford could be achieved through--
His mind focused itself, as it was bound to do, upon this thing as it affected his own desires. He, too, was a passionate hater, for all Hellbeam's denial. His thought leapt at once to Nancy McDonald and the man who had thrust himself between him and his desires. Whatever insane hatred lay behind Hellbeam's purpose, it was not one whit more insensate than Elas Peterman's feelings against the man who had come down from Sachigo at Nancy's bidding.
Suddenly he looked up and glanced at the man occupying the chair that was his. Hellbeam was still gazing at the window, pre-occupied with his own thoughts.
"You can leave this thing in my hands, sir," he said. "Our organisation has been working steadily to undermine the Sachigo people for months past. That has always been part of our policy. I'd say the whole thing's going to fit very well. You say, if necessary, you'll find half a million dollars for the business. We shan't need a tithe of that. However, it's well to know it. And none of it needs to worry our directors. I'll set about it right away--in my own fashion--and I'll promise you a quick result. We'll smash these folk all right. But how it's to hand you the man you need I'm not wise--"
"No." Hellbeam's eyes were certainly derisive as they turned back from the window. "This man, Martin, will show himself when he sees the--destruction. My people will do the rest."
"Unless he leaves it--to Sternford. They tell us this man would as soon fight as laugh. That's how Miss McDonald said the missionary, Father Adam, told her."
"Father Adam?" The derision in the financier's eyes had deepened. "That's the man that other fool talks of."
Peterman shrugged. The sting in the financier's words stirred him to resentment.
"I don't know about that. Anyway--"
"How is it you say? Get busy. Yes."
Hellbeam rose stiffly from his seat and picked up his hat. He was quite untouched by the other's change of tone.
"Do it how you please. Break that mill. I care nothing for the means. Smash 'em, and leave the rest to me. And when you that have done you can do the thing you please. You will have my good will. I say that. Now I go."
* * * * *
Peterman picked up the 'phone the moment the door had closed behind the one man in all the world he really feared, and at the other end of it Nancy took the message summoning her to his presence. The man spoke with unusual urgency. But his tone was pleasant, and more than conciliatory. He wanted her at once. She could leave her reports. She could leave everything. He had some news for her of the pleasantest nature. Oh, yes. He had determined big things for her. She had earned them all. But a thing had happened whereby there need be no limit to her advancement if she would take the chance of a big work offered her. Would she kindly come up right away.
Nancy listened to this message with a stirring of heart. What was the great work that was to place no limit on her advancement? It was a feeling rather than a thought. For a moment she stood in her glass-partitioned office after she had received the message and a smile of great happiness lit her eyes.
She was desperately earnest with a singleness of purpose which had in it something of the recklessness of the father before her. She was a child in all else. A wide vision of achievement was spread out before her. She could see nothing beyond. She could see nothing to give her pause, nothing even to bestir a belated caution. So she left her office for the interview Peterman had demanded without suspicion, and with a heart and mind ready to plunge her headlong into any labours which the Skandinavia demanded of her.
She had completely forgotten, in that moment of exultation, the squarely military figure that had passed down the dining-room of the Chateau, and the coldly unsmiling eyes with which it had regarded her as she sat with her companion over their memorable meal. _