It was my first visit to the offices of the Lancing Trust; and I retain the memory of a vast, wind-swept barn on the edge of Hampstead Heath, with an old red-brick cottage and pent-houses of tarred wood attached. There were a great many box-files, a gigantic set of loose-leaf ledgers, a fair-sized reference library and a large number of typewriters. On one wall I recognized the map which Aylmer Lancing used to keep in his study to remind him of the stages by which his grip had spread over the earth’s surface. In all other respects, the building might have belonged to a poor-law relieving-officer; and Sonia, who obviously expected to find a double row of bankers smoking long cigars at a gleaming mahogany table, was no less obviously disappointed.
“I came to see if I could help you in any way,” I told O’Rane, who had rather frightened me the night before by his air of physical exhaustion.
We found him now with one of his secretaries in Raymond Stornaway’s private office, fidgeting with the will. I learned that the money was to be spent “for the good of humanity”; and in the construction of that clause he had already received so much contradictory advice that he had closed his office to chance callers.
“I didn’t expect Stornaway to die so soon,” was all he would say when I asked him his plans.
“I doubt if time will make your problem any easier,” I answered, as I joined Sonia in front of the tattered wall-map.
There, from the centre of what Lancing had bought as a burnt-out town-site, the Lancing influence spread in extending circles. A name and date in faded ink marked the advance of his railroads, the acquisition of his forests and mines, the linking of lake to ocean for the transportation of his grain. Dotted lines, leading to vague infinity, shewed where Lancing had splashed out of the union into the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico.
“You must move to a decent office,” Sonia put in. “And we can’t go on at The Sanctuary if you want to entertain properly. People will expect us to live up to our position, you know.”
O’Rane smiled grimly as he ushered us compellingly to the door.
“Whether that’s for the good of humanity . . .,” he murmured.
After this single meeting I resolved not to break in on his contemplation until I was invited. Very soon my attention was to be claimed by troubles of my own, for I was not satisfied with the state of Barbara’s mind or body; I, too, wanted to think; and, though I treated O’Rane to an unsolicited misgiving whenever I remembered his new estate, I will not pretend that I thought of him much after the feverish seven days in which every one I met said: “You’ve heard about it, of course? That’s the sort of thing that would happen to Sonia. What d’you suppose they’ll do with it?” . . .