“I’m going to make this darned thing hum,” said Baltazar to Weatherley.
Money was the first object. Brains he could command in plenty. He envisaged London as his El Dorado. The history of his exploitation of the capitalist and landowner would, if it were published, become a text-book on the science and remain forever a classic. He forced wealth-guarding doors of whose existence he had been ignorant six months before; by a stroke of the genius which had brought him his position in China, he secured the support, financial and moral, without the control of an important group of newspapers; he enlisted the aid of every possible unit in his rapidly increasing circle of acquaintance. The scope of the Weekly had extended far beyond the modest bounds of its conception. Originally it was to be an appeal to the thinkers of all nations. “Damn thinkers,” said Baltazar. “They’re as scarce as angels and about as useful. We want to put thoughts into the heads of those that don’t think. It’s the Doers we want to get hold of. A thing academic is a thing dead. This is going to live.” Some of the superior smiled at his enthusiasm; but Baltazar damned them and went his way. This was going to be the Great Teaching Crusade of the War, the most far-sweeping instrument of propaganda known to journalism. He pulled all strings, brought in all parties. A high dignitary of the Labour World and a Tory Duke of unimpeachable integrity found themselves appointed as Trustees of The New Universe Publication Fund. Money flowed in.
One day he ran across Pillivant, in St. James’s Street, Pillivant mainly individualized by a sable fur coat and a lustrous silk hat and a monstrous cigar cutting his red face like a fifteen-inch gun cutting the deck of a battleship. Baltazar greeted him as a long-lost brother and haled him off to lunch at his club. Mellowed by the club’s famous Chambertin and 1870 port, he took a rosy view of all kinds of worlds including The New Universe, as presented by his host. It was a great scheme, he agreed. He was sick of all newspapers, no matter of what shades of opinion. They were all the same. Honesty was not in them. Nor was there honesty in any Government. Men with not a quarter of what he had done for the country to their credit, were being rewarded with peerages and baronetcies. In the New Year’s Honours List he had not been mentioned. Not even offered a beastly knighthood. But it didn’t matter. He was a patriot. And it was very fine old brandy, and he didn’t mind if he did have another glass. Still, if a man put down a thousand pounds for a thing, it was only business prudence to know where he stood.
“You’ll stand here,” cried Baltazar, spreading before his eyes a printed list of the General Committee, a galaxy of dazzling names. “You’ll take rank in the forefront of the biggest patriotic crusade that ever was. Your light will no longer be under a bushel. It will shine before men. What’s the good of your name being lost in a close-printed subscription list? This is a totally different thing. Your appearance here will give you position. Look at the people. Have you ever stood in with a crowd like this before?”
Baltazar held the mellowed profiteer with his compelling eyes.
“I can’t say that I have,” replied Pillivant. “But all the same——”
“But all the same,” Baltazar interrupted, “you’ve been at loggerheads with the War Office. There was that question asked in the House over the Aerodrome contract. You told me about it yourself. Now listen to me carefully”—Baltazar played a gambler’s card—“your coming in with us will be a guarantee of integrity. It’s obvious that no one on this list could do otherwise than run straight. The worry it would save you!” He looked at his watch and jumped up. “By George! I’ve got an appointment with our Treasurer, Lord Beldon. Would you like to come along and hear more about the scheme? Waiter! Ask them to get me a taxi. We’ll find our hats and coats round here.”
He drove a gratified Pillivant to Chesterfield Gardens and introduced him to Lord Beldon (with whom he had no appointment whatever) as an enthusiastic believer in The New Universe, ready to finance it to the extent of two or three thousand pounds. “Three thousand, wasn’t it?”
“I said between two and three thousand,” replied Pillivant, flattered at his reception by the powerful old peer, and not daring to fall back on the original one thousand that had been vaguely suggested. A bluff, of course, for which he admired Baltazar, although he cursed him in his heart; but was it worth while calling it? He could buy up this old blighter of a lord twice over. He would show him that he had the money. “I was thinking of two thousand five hundred,” he continued. “But what’s a miserable five hundred? Yes. You can put me down for three thousand. In fact”—with a flourish he drew a cheque-book from his pocket—“I’ll write you the cheque now, payable, I presume, to the Right Honourable the Earl of Beldon.”
“Or The New Universe. As you please.”