III
"If you tell me the little man's been writing to you," were Loring's first words, "I'm afraid I shan't believe you."
I helped him to take his coat off and led the way into the dining-room.
"I wouldn't insult your intelligence with such a story," I answered. "It was infinitely more Raneyesque."
"Well, where is he and what's he doing?"
"Where did he say he was going? What did he say he would do?" I asked in turn. "My dear Jim, Raney's one of those people whose dreams come true. He told us he was going to Mexico, and he's gone to Mexico; he told us he was going to make money, and I gather he's making the devil of a lot."
"When's he coming home?" Loring asked.
I was about to admit ignorance when an old recollection stirred in my brain and I completed the history.
"He told me he would dine with me in this room on the first of May next year. He will dine—at that time—in this place."
Loring helped himself to plovers' eggs and began slowly to remove the shells.
"The little man's born out of time, you know," he said, with a laugh. "He belongs to the spacious days of Elizabeth. I'm glad he's in luck. God knows, if ever a man deserved it, if ever there was poetic justice for real pluck ..." he left the sentence eloquently unfinished. "Drive ahead, George."
"In time," I said, "and at a price."
Nearly four years in the House of Commons had made me quite shameless in the matter of log-rolling. I held Loring to ransom and refused to utter another word about O'Rane until he had promised to let me descend on House of Steynes with a party of ten French journalists who were arriving in England in two months' time and had to be shown every side of English social life. It was a preposterous request for me to make, and Loring very properly refused it—not once but several times. Only at the end of a long and—if I may say so—well chosen dinner, when I declined even to mention O'Rane's name, did he show a willingness to compromise.
"Have it your own way!" he exclaimed impatiently. "I shan't be there, though."
"My dear Jim, unless you're there from start to finish——"
"This is sheer blackmail!" he cried.
"As you will," I answered, folding my arms obstinately.
"You're a dirty dog, George," he answered, with slow scorn. "I suppose I shall have to promise, though."
Before telling my tale, I had to explain how it had reached me. The previous evening had been devoted to one of many all-night sittings on the interminable 1909 Budget. I walked home between five and six o'clock in the morning, as the returning market-carts rumbled sleepily westward along Knightsbridge, and belated revellers in vivid dresses and with tired, white faces flashed by in taxis and private cars. My head was aching, my lungs seemed charged with the poisoned air of the House, and I was chilled to the marrow of my bones; cursing a factious Opposition, I had reached the door of my uncle's house in Princes Gardens and was fumbling for my latch-key, when I noticed a man sitting on the steps with his head on his knees and his hands clasped round his legs. He awoke as I tried to squeeze by him, rubbed his eyes, yawned, gazed round him, and then scrambled stiffly to his feet.
"Maybe you're Mr. George Oakleigh?" he asked, with an American intonation almost too strong to be natural. And then, when I bowed in assent, "Gee, but it's cold waiting. D'ye think I could come in for a piece? I've been sitting here since ten last night."
My first desire was for a hot bath, my second for bed. Both points were clearly propounded to the American.
"Guess that'll keep," he answered easily. "I've a message from your friend David O'Rane." He felt in his pocket and produced a card with the name "James Morris." and some address that I have forgotten in Mexico City. On the back was pencilled, "Please give bearer any assistance he may require. D. O'R."
"What can I do for you, Mr. Morris?" I asked unenthusiastically, fingering the card and then glancing at my watch.
"A warm room and something to eat," he answered, with a shiver. "My name's not Morris, by the way, but it'll serve. And I'm not a native of Mexico, but that'll serve. My folk come from this side of the water, but they're not proud of me for some reason. By the same token, I shan't keep you long from your bath. I'm known in Knightsbridge. 'Late to bed and early to rise, Is the rule for Knightsbridge, if you're wise.' All right, I'm not jagged."
Mr. Morris's manner was so unprepossessing that nothing but my regard for O'Rane would have induced me to admit him to the house at this—or any—hour. In appearance, the man was of medium size with powerful hands and thin, riding legs. His hair and skin were fair, his eyes grey, and his features regular though weak. All pretension to good looks, however, was ruined by his expression, which was an unattractive blend of cunning and effrontery. His lower lip shot out at the end of a sentence, as though to conceal the weak line of his chin: deep furrows from nose to mouth formed themselves into a perpetual sneer; the pale eyes were half hidden under their insolent, drooping lids. And with it all there was something pitiful about the man: he was so young, not more than two and twenty; the recklessness was so crude, the frailty of character so patent. He seemed like a highly strung child who had been bullied into obstinacy and violence by an unsympathetic nurse. And that, I believe, was in fact one part of his history.
"Come in, Mr. Morris," I said, opening the door. "I shall be glad to hear any news of O'Rane and to do anything I can for a friend of his."
"A name to conjure with, seemingly," said Morris, with a malicious smile.
"O'Rane's?"
"I reckon so. You'll admit you didn't precisely freeze on to me at first sight. However, no ill feeling."
"It was an unusual hour for a call," I replied.
"And I looked an unusual sort of a customer, eh? Well, never mind. What's this? Cheese? I can do with some of that. No whiskey! I don't use spirits nowadays, not since I met O'Rane."
We sat in silence while he munched bread and cheese, contentedly glancing round the room at the pictures or, when he thought I was not looking, letting his eyes rest on me. The curtains were still drawn, and the yellow light from the chandelier, feeble by contrast with the cold, diamond clarity of the dawn outside, lent an added element of the fantastic to our meeting. I lit a cigar, settled wearily into my chair and told him not to hurry himself.
"Well, start at the beginning," he said at length, "I met him eighteen months ago in Tomlinson's Saloon, Acacia Avenue, Mexico City. He hadn't been in the country more than a few days—landed with five thousand dollars he'd made out Africa way and was looking for likely oil propositions. I was with the Central Syndicate in those days. No need to ask why I was in the accursed country at all, or what I was doing. The Syndicate made me cashier in their innocence of heart, and, though I wasn't overpaid, their bookkeeping left loopholes for a man of enterprise. I used those loopholes some. By the time I met O'Rane, the Syndicate had lent me 4000 dollars—more'n eight hundred pounds—without knowing it. We weren't in sight of an audit, I'd got months to doctor the entries, it was roses all the way." Truculently he thrust forward his lower lip, every inch of him the bragging schoolboy. "Then—I had ninety minutes' warning—the Syndicate started in for amalgamation with the Southern Combine, the accountants rolled up for the valuation—and I thought Mexico City wasn't good for my health."
He paused dramatically, finished his soda water and put down the empty glass.
"That's when I met O'Rane," he went on. "There wasn't much packing or leave-taking to get through. I booked express for New Orleans and turned into Tomlinson's till it was time to get under way for the depot. That's where they took me—I was a fool to run before evening, it was bound to arouse suspicion. I'd been talking to O'Rane a matter of half an hour—oil prospects and such like—when I felt a hand on my shoulder and a shiver down my spine."
He paused again and helped himself to a cigar.
"To this day I don't know why he did it," he resumed, "but I'd not been four and twenty hours in my cell when they told me there was a visitor wanting to speak with me.
"'Tell him I'm only at home on the sixth Friday of the month,' I said.
"I didn't want any durned visitors. He came in, though—leastways he came to the door and peeked through the grille.
"'Morning,' says he, 'you remember we met in Tomlinson's yesterday. My name's O'Rane.'
"'I've not got a card,' says I, 'but you'll find full particulars in the book upstairs.'
"I wasn't out to be civil and I thought he'd taken the hint and cleared. He was still at the grille, though, next time I looked up.
"'Which college were you?' he asks after a bit—for all the world as if we were still drinking cocktails in Tomlinson's. College! If he'd asked my views on Bacon and Shakespeare....
"'What the hell's that to you?' I blazed out.
"'It was Merton or Corpus, but I can't remember which,' he says.
"I didn't say anything to that.
"'I was at the House,' he went on. 'I wanted to see if I couldn't give you a lift up. What's the amount in dispute?'
"'Four thousand,' I answered and heard him whistle.
"'Pounds?' he asks.
"'No such luck,' I said. 'Dollars.' I mean, to be lagged for that....
"Believe me or not, that man O'Rane sighed with relief.
"'I can manage that,' he said. 'So long.'
"Next morning they let me out. There may have been more surprised men in Mexico City, but, if there were, I didn't meet 'em. How he squared the Syndicate and the officials and the whole durned Criminal Code of Mexico, I don't know. I didn't ask. I had a bath and a shave at his hotel, then he gave me breakfast, then a cigar, and then we put up our feet and talked.
"'You'd better quit Mexico City for a piece,' he began.
"I nodded. The same great thought had occurred to me.
"'I'm out for oil,' he went on, 'd'you care to come?'
"'D'you care about having me?' I suggested.
"'I shouldn't have asked you if I didn't,' he says.
"'I'd look for oil in hell for you,' I said.
"We shook on that.
"'We shall rough it some,' he warned me. 'Better hear the terms first. Item one: I'll never ask you to do a thing I won't do myself.'
"'Done!' I said.
"'Then that's about all,' says he, taking his feet off the table and looking at his watch. 'Half profits for each, and I'm to say when the proposition's worked out.'"
Mr. James Morris, as he chose to call himself, late of Merton (or Corpus Christi) College, Oxford, knocked the ash off his cigar and looked round the library.
"You've not got such a thing as a large scale map of Mexico, have you?" he asked. "Well, it doesn't matter. I guess the places would mostly be only names to you. We started West—Gonsalo way—and we worked some. Living Springs was our first success, and we let the Southern Combine have an option on that so as we could buy plant for the St. Esmond concession, and six months' working of St. Esmond gave us capital to buy out the Gonsalo Development Syndicate and round off our holding. Since then we've struck oil at Pica, Melango and Long Valley."
He paused considerately to let the unfamiliar names sink into my memory.
"In eighteen months we've never looked back," he went on, with rising enthusiasm. "Every dollar we made went back to the business—barring what we needed to live on, and that was mostly bread, meat and tobacco, with an occasional new pair of boots or breeches to keep us decent. And then three months ago we started prospecting in new territory—I can't tell you where it is, 'cos we're still negotiating. I found the oil, and O'Rane did the rest. He thinks it's the richest thing we've ever struck and he's going to collar the proposition. The territory's about the size of Scotland, and the concession will run to anything between one and two million dollars."
He pulled an envelope from his pocket and scribbled some figures on the back.
"We're selling our shirts to get it," he told me. "O'Rane never borrows money, but he's sent me over here to float a company to buy everything we've found or made in the last year and a half. He couldn't come himself: the sweepings of God's universe that we call our labour would be drunk by ten and knifing each other by ten-thirty without him to get a cinch on 'em. If I bring it off, we shall have enough for the concession. Maybe it won't pan out as rich as we hope, and then we start again at the bottom. That's the sort of risk he loves taking. That's—that's just O'Rane. Maybe he's right, and there's oil enough to flood Sahara. Put the concession at a million dollars and the average yield at ten per cent on your capital. A hundred thousand dollars per annum—gross. Take half of that away for working expenses—fifty thousand, net. Half profits on that, twenty-five thousand dollars a year—£5000 for each of us.
"O'Rane says he'll be satisfied with that. When we touch total net profit of fifty thousand dollars, he'll sell out or turn the proposition over to a company. Then he'll come back to England and go into Parliament and cut a dash. And I—well, I'll have to say good-bye to him, I guess."
He stopped abruptly as though there were much more that he would have liked to say. We sat smoking in silence for a few moments. Morris's raw, ill-regulated susceptibilities had made him an easy victim to Raney's personality: perhaps he was already wondering what to do when the strange partnership dissolved, and Raney returned alone—perhaps he recognized his own inability to continue the work single-handed when the inspiration and driving force were removed: perhaps, as his eyes glanced out on the silence and desolation of Knightsbridge, he was weighing the possibility of starting afresh and making a new home for himself in a Western capital.
For myself, I had no other thought than that I should have liked a man to speak of me as Morris had spoken of O'Rane. I should have welcomed a little of his humanity, his singleness of heart and his unshakeable faith in himself. While he worked in shirt and trousers or ventured his last hundreds on an admitted scamp or staked everything he had won on the chance of greater winnings, I was sitting tired and chilled by my late hours at the House, ruling Morris out from my list of desirable acquaintances on the ground that I disliked his manner and appearance, possibly even wondering if he were to be trusted to put down the silver cigar cutter before he left....
"Is there anything I can do for you, Morris?" I asked with a sudden shock of penitence at my own insular prejudice.
He noticed that I had dropped the 'Mister' and seemed gratified.
"Guess not, thanks," he answered, yawning and stretching himself. "I've got the proposition pretty nigh fixed. I'll take any message you like to send O'Rane. He sent love to everybody and would like to hear from you. There's not much time or accommodation for writing out there. Our first camp was two blankets, a packing case and a banjo. When I went down with fever he gave me ragtime back-numbers and stories from the 'Earthly Paradise.' The man could make his pile doing memory stunts at a dime show. God! if I hadn't been so weak I could have laughed some. William Morris in Central America, in a bell tent bunged up with oil samples and quinine bottles." He glanced round the room at the shining mahogany furniture, and his toe tested the thickness of the carpet. "Well, good-bye," he said. "I'm pleased to have met you."
As he stood with outstretched hand, there was little enough of the American about him for all his laboured transatlanticisms.
"Are you and he all alone?" I asked.
"God! no. Not now. We've got the off-scourings of every nation and most of the saloons of Mexico City working for us. They're a dandy lot, but it's pretty to see O'Rane handling them. If ever you lose your faith in human nature, come and see him licking half-castes and Gringoes into shape. They'd string up old man Diaz and make O'Rane president for the asking. Well, I must be going."
"Look here," I said, as we shook hands again, "you must come and dine with me——"
He stopped me with a shake of the head.
"Thanks. I don't show up in the West End by day. I spend my mornings down town—Mincing Lane way—and then I retire up stage. 'Sides, I'm due to sail on Friday if I can get fixed by then."
I walked with him to the front door and watched him appreciatively sniffing the early morning air.
"Good old London!" he exclaimed, and then with a return of his former sneering arrogance, "D'you ever see X——?"
The name he mentioned was borne by a well-known Permanent Under-Secretary in one of the Government offices. He was a regular visitor at my uncle's house.
"And his wife?" Morris pursued. "Well, next time you run across her, just tell her that all's well in the New World. Good-bye."
When I had finished my story, Loring threw away the stump of his cigar and stretched himself.
"As I told you earlier in the evening," he observed, "the little man has been born about three centuries too late."