Honore, sighing faintly, adjusted glasses, for he was nearsighted.
It purported to be a letter sent by Count Muraviev to the representatives of Russia at the different European courts.
“It is the supreme duty at the present time of all states to put some limit to these unnecessary armaments and to find some means of averting the calamities which threaten the whole world. Impressed by this feeling, his majesty, the emperor, has been pleased to command me to propose to all governments accredited to the imperial court, the meeting of a conference to discuss this grave problem. Such a conference, with God’s help, would be a happy augury for the opening century. It would powerfully concentrate the efforts of all states which sincerely wish to see the triumph of the grand idea of universal peace over the elements of trouble and discord. It would, at the same time, bind their agreement by the principles of law and equity which support the security of states and welfare of peoples.”
“This will be sent in August to all the Powers,” said Jules, as Honore laid down the letter in silence. “We expect, thereafter, that in May, 1899, delegates will assemble at The Hague to discuss this. Three points will be discussed there, disarmament, humanitarian measures and arbitration.”
“And what will our agents have to say at this conference?” asked Honore, his mouth twisting slightly.
Jules touched his lips delicately with his handkerchief. He regarded his cousin with a straightforward expression. “My dear Honore, our agents, like us, their employers, are realists, not pretty dreamers! Not like the Czar, for instance. They will very reasonably point out that disarmament is impracticable, especially for Russia, threatened by Japan, and France, threatened by Germany, and noble England, of course, threatened by perfidious foes in every quarter of the globe. They will point out that there is no satisfactory division between an armament for offensive purposes and a force for national defense. There will be no agreement, for the question of national defense is outside the field of international discussion, just as yet, anyway.
“However, our agents, being civilized men, will condemn the use of bullets that ‘expand in the human body,’ the throwing of projectiles or explosives ‘from balloons or by other analogous means, for a period of five years,’ and the making use of projectiles ‘whose sole object is to diffuse asphyxiating or deleterious gases.’”
Honore stared into space, a grim smile on his mouth. “Yesterday,” he said, “the Old Man wired his congratulations on my new invention, poison mustard gas, and has given orders that Barbour-Bouchard immediately put it on the market.”
“Yes, I understand that,” Jules replied, blandly. “And from this telegram from Washington, I understand your machine gun is much better than Maxim’s.”
“From whom I stole the idea,” Honore pointed out, still smiling.
“But of course,” came Jules’ smooth voice. “We’re all thieves. We all get ideas from each other. That is legitimate. Incidentally, Robsons & Strong are about to supply Maxims to the Boers. However, to get on about the Czar’s letter: the part pertaining to arbitration. Now, I am a firm exponent of arbitration. Arbitration, by all means. I understand that the English delegate, Sir Julian Pauncefote, will introduce a proposal for the establishment of a permanent committee of arbitration. I understand this will be accepted—”
“And what then, becomes of us armaments manufacturers? Are we to beat our swords into plowshares, and so on?” Honore’s smile had become drearily contemptuous, but he watched Jules alertly.
“Oh, by no means!” responded Jules, smiling in return. “As I said before, I am all for arbitration. Nothing in the world is as good for the munitions business as committees for arbitration!”
“I call that cheap cynicism,” said Honore. “But go on. You can always be relied upon for some amusing deviltry.”
“Our agents,” went on Jules, “will be instructed to lend grave assent to the arbitration idea. And then they will point out in substance that to preserve peace one must prepare for war.”
“In other words, to avert wars one must prepare for wars.”
“You put it very cleverly, Honore. The Czar’s little letter will cost us a pretty penny. Bribery has gone up. But I expect we will profit a great deal by the conference which will result. In the holy cause of peace every nation will look like an arsenal. We are about to become Merchants of Self-Defense.”
“A rose by any other name—” said Leon, grinning.
“As for the poison gas business,” Jules went on without a glance at his brother, “of course it is not to be used except in self-defense, or in the event of invasion.”
“But self-defense covers a multitude of overt acts,” said Honore.
“You become cleverer every day, Honore. By the way, are you coming any closer to the formula for the German slow-burning cocoa powder?”
“I think so. I’m using the microscope now on the German sample. But I understand the British are to buy the formula from the German manufacturer for thirty thousand pounds. The British would be very nasty about us stealing formulæ for which they pay a fortune to a traitor.”
“Yes, nothing can be nastier and more righteous than a Britisher when someone steals something from him which he had stolen himself. But what about the formula?”
“I think I can change it slightly, so as to maintain its explosive qualities and yet make it a little different. However, we might not have to borrow: Robsons & Strong will probably furnish us with the original formula. Provided they can get it from the other manufacturer.”
“True. Incidentally, we must prove to Robsons & Strong that our machine gun is superior to theirs. Then they could sell the Maxims to the Boers, before the war breaks out, and use our machine-gun patent themselves. I’ll be interested to see how they turn out in practical experience. But we’ll have a chance nearer at home.”
“Promoting wars abroad may be all right, but Barbour-Bouchard has never yet betrayed its Government,” said Honore stubbornly. “What the hell do we care for Cuba, anyway?” He reached for his overcoat and withdrew the evening paper. “Listen to this translation of a letter published in the foremost Spanish newspaper: ‘America, under a hypocritical mask of concern and solicitude for Cuba, is preparing an imperialistic program, which has for its first act the seizing of Spanish colonies. It is then just a step to seizing control of South America, and instituting a holy war in Europe, which, when the smoke clears away, will reveal America as victor and merciless exploiter. America’s gospel of peace is the ambush behind which she prepares for world-conquest.’” Honore tossed the paper aside. “Who is responsible for that little article, you or Robsons?” He helped himself to one of Jules’ cigars. “How much did you pay Señor Dupuy De Lome, the Spanish minister at Washington, to write that naughty letter about McKinley?”
“Nothing at all, my dear Honore! You wrong De Lome by your insinuations.”
“Hum. Perhaps. It’s a habit of mine to ‘wrong’ everyone who comes in contact with you, Jules. But what are you going to do about Mr. Bryan, who thinks we are a stink in the nostrils of the righteous, and is doing some good work denouncing the imperialistic policy of the government? You can’t assassinate him, you know, Jules. Assassination isn’t being done these days in the best society.”
“No one listens to Bryan, at least no one with sense,” Jules laughed. “However, I’ve just had him endorsed by the Silver Republicans, and perhaps that’ll divert his mind from us. He’s ambitious, is our little back-country Messiah. But we’ll never let him become President.”
“Where do you get this ‘editorial we’?” demanded Leon, who occasionally liked to spike his brother, for all his fondness. “You seem to forget that the Old Man is still very much alive. Or have you forgotten that?”
“Not at all. I never forget anything, dear Leon. I’m not forgetting, for instance, that the Old Man hasn’t a year to live. You didn’t know that? He’s got a heart that’s running on pure nerve now, and nothing else. Aunt May knows, that is why she dr
agged him away before Christmas on that cruise.”
Leon could not help exchanging a swift glance with Honore. He knew that Honore preferred him to Jules, and he was candidly surprised at this. What did Honore expect of him? But just then Paul Barbour came in, his face flushed and heated-looking from hurry and annoyance.
Paul’s big body had taken a great deal of fat upon itself. Being very tall, and weighing well over two hundred and twenty-five pounds, Paul dwarfed his smaller, slighter cousins. In the presence of his bulk, his fair complexion, blue eyes, and gray-streaked light chestnut hair, their darkness became gnome-like, their faces foreign and too subtle, their eyes secret and not to be trusted. He was the brutal and bellicose Saxon, forthright in his villainy and heavy savagery, and they were the sly Latins, supple of mind, swift of thought, crafty, smiling, cool and deadly. Yet, for all his bulk and visible power, the belligerency in his broad flushed face and choleric blue eye, his air of competence and blind power, he seemed less potent than they, less formidable, less to be feared and suspected. They sat about Jules’ desk, looking up at him in courteous smiling silence, and something about them stopped him for a moment in the very act of removing his thick fur-lined coat. His expression, prepared to be contemptuous, sharpened a little, uneasily. The color spread to his heavy, clean-shaven jowls, tinged his neck. At forty-six, Paul was already showing the effects of over-eating.
“Well,” he said, half enquiringly, half in irritation. “What is this weighty conference to which I have been invited? And why couldn’t it have been at my office?”
A glance flicked between the brothers and Honore. But Jules was suavity itself.
“Please sit down, Paul. We all wished to have a talk with you, and as my office is the most central we decided to meet here. Will you have a cigar?”
“One of those poison strings you affect, Jules? No, thank you.”
“You are very wise, Paul,” said Honore, smiling at him. Paul smiled back, grudgingly. He feared and hated Jules, merely hated Leon, but sometimes almost liked Honore. He often said to Elsa that somehow a fellow might find it possible to trust Honore. However, he had less respect for Honore than he had for Jules and Leon. Mistakenly, he believed he might, if given the opportunity, browbeat and subjugate Honore, and therein lay his liking for him, and also a slight contempt.
He lit one of his own cigars, offered one to Honore, who accepted. Jules sat back in his chair, smiling amiably. He had lit the gas globes overhead, and they shone down on his sleek and bony skull. Leon, hunched forward so that his head seemed sunken between his broad square shoulders, looked at each of the other men with his narrowed eyes; his smile was a little sullen.
Jules very courteously handed Paul the telegram he had received, translated it for him. Paul read, and listened, and as he did so an unhealthy purplish flush overspread his cheeks, which seemed to swell with rage and offense.
“Why didn’t I receive this information?” he demanded, his bellicose eye blazing upon Jules. “After all, Barbour-Bouchard is the parent organization, and the others are only subsidiaries. It was your duty to direct all information to be sent to our office. Besides, why haven’t my agents been informed? And who the devil are your ‘agents’?”
Jules was silent a moment; Leon hunched forward a little more, and Honore’s brown pallor had colored as though his slow but steady temper were rising. Then Jules began to speak, smoothly as always, unfailingly polite:
“Your agents, my dear Paul, have apparently been asleep. I never thought much of them, myself, though you picked them personally. My agents and friends happen to be those I have cultivated over a period of years; it is not only a matter of money, and blocks of stock, but true friendship. My senators owe a great deal to me, and, naturally, they are active in my interests, and often exert themselves to prove their gratitude to me. And now that ‘duty’ business you speak of: we owe no duty to any one. Barbour-Bouchard, and all its ‘subsidiaries,’ are one unit, like one body, all parts coordinated for the common good. I needn’t remind you of Honore’s inventions, particularly the powders, which you are manufacturing on your own premises. Honore did not think of ‘you’ and ‘we’ when consigning the invention to the unit as a whole. I thought of all of us when I invented my steel. I do not quite like your imperialistic attitude.” He paused, and his voice, though still silken, became full of sleek enmity: “You may be vice-president of Barbour-Bouchard, but I am president of the Sessions Steel Company, Leon is president of the Bank, and Honore is president of the Kinsolving Arms Company.”
There was a long silence. Paul, turning his big head slowly on his short and powerful neck, looked at each of them in turn. He looked at those brown foreign faces, the alien eyes steady and fixed and without mercy, the subtle mouths. And then he turned back to Jules, and there was a nasty smile on his mouth.
“I see,” he said significantly. “Threats, eh?”
“Threats?” expostulated Jules in a very hurt voice. “How preposterous you are, my dear Paul! Threats!”
Paul suddenly struck the desk with his big clenched fist. It made a meaty but heavy sound.
“Threats! That’s what I said. Don’t wriggle out of it, in your Frenchy way, Jules Bouchard! You are trying to remind me that my position might not be as secure as yours, that though I am vice-president of Barbour-Bouchard, I rate lower than you as a shareholder. You want to remind me that Honore and all of you own fifty-one percent in the Kinsolving Arms Company, thirty-five percent of the Barbour-Bouchard stock, forty percent in the Sessions Steel Company, and percentages, very nice percentages, in all the other subsidiaries. You want me not to forget these things, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Leon brutally. “We want you not to forget. We want to remind you that we three act together, that all the Bouchards are behind us, and that behind you—”
“Is Ernest Barbour, president of Barbour-Bouchard,” Paul interrupted, with a cunning smile at Leon.
“Allow me to correct you, Paul,” said Jules, with a shake of his head. “Dear Uncle Ernest is not behind you. He is behind the winner. You win, and he’ll back you; we win, and he’ll back us. You know that, I can see by your face.” He paused, and sighed. “Uncle Ernest is always the Britisher. And the British never back failures. They have a way of finding nobility and the highest motives in the top dog.”
Paul’s features had become congested with his rage and murderous hatred.
“You are counting on too much,” he said in a voice shaken and hoarse. “I’ve been seeing this coming. You haven’t been so subtle in your plotting. I’ve seen all along. And Uncle Ernest has seen it, you can wager on that.”
“Of course he’s seen it!” Jules laughed lightly. He beamed pleasantly on his infuriated cousin. “I quite agree with you there.”
Paul’s heart seemed to thicken in his chest, to stop his breath. His hands clenched and unclenched, and his throat swelled. Fear and impotence turned his body cold.
“I’ll ask him,” he said, and even to himself he sounded futile.
“Do,” urged Jules. “And if I’m not mistaken, he’ll laugh and admit it. Always the realist, dear Uncle Ernest.”
Paul again struck the desk. “But if you think he’ll back a lot of dirty, scheming, oily Frenchmen you’re damned mistaken! He’ll back you no more than he backed your pious imbecile of a brother, Philippe, when he wanted to marry Gertrude! He’ll find a way to cheat you at the last moment, as he did your brother—”
He stopped, appalled, literally biting the stupid tongue that had betrayed him. He glared at the three unsmiling faces turned upon him, deadly, watching faces.
“Go on,” said Jules softly, with a glance at Leon. “Go on. What did he do to Philippe?”
Paul tried to bluster. “You know very well that he finally brought Trudie to her senses, and made her realize what a foolish thing it would have been to marry Philippe.” He felt very sick. Gertrude was dead eighteen years, but the mention of her name brought her before him, and he felt the old de
sperate stab of pain at the memory. Then, glancing up furtively at his cousins, he saw very clearly that any mercy, any cooperation he might have hoped for from them, was gone, and that they were now his enemies who would stop at nothing. This realization frightened him, drove away his grief, put him on enraged and loathing guard.
In the silence that followed, Leon began to stare broodingly at the floor, Honore appeared to be grimly depressed, and Jules very carefully fitted the tips of his delicate fingers together and then surveyed them with a sort of whimsical pleasure. He did not look at Paul when he spoke again.
“I have always considered you a man of sense and intelligence, Paul. You have done some remarkably splendid work in the last few years. Among other things, it was you who thought of sending a naval mission to South American countries and another to China, though the whole world laughed. Perhaps you didn’t hear it laugh at the Yankee who refused to remember that these countries had declined similar offers from European Powers. Your ability not to hear laughter has always impressed me. I confess that I, myself, am very susceptible to laughter. Yes, you have done well. You haven’t failed in anything you have undertaken. That is why we want you with us, instead of against us. You see, we wouldn’t want to ruin you—entirely. After all, you are our cousin.”
“And what the devil do you think you could do to me?” asked Paul contemptuously, but staring at Jules with a wary eye.
“It is inconceivable, of course,” said Jules gently, “but we could liquidate. We could throw our stock upon the market. We could become another company, competitors. Honore owns the patents still, you know, as I hold mine. But, naturally, Uncle Ernest would not want us to do these things. He would make many—concessions—if we expressed ourselves as determined.” He regarded Paul smilingly and blandly, his full eyes brilliant under their lids.
Fright possessed Paul, but his hatred was even greater.
“My daughter, Alice, is his granddaughter,” he said.
“We have not forgotten that, and also that she is his heiress. Yes, we know that. You see, we are quite candid with you, Paul. In three years Alice will have reached her majority. Naturally, she will marry, and then there will be her husband, and her children—You might not even be president of Barbour-Bouchard, when the Old Man passes on to the heaven where all good pirates go. Now, we’d like to see you president. You deserve the position. But, if necessary, as you know, we can block you. And Uncle Ernest, on earth or off it, will watch us cut your throat with great amusement, in spite of the fact that he esteems you and likes you. But personal relationships and friendships were always less important to him than ruthlessness and ingenuity. I don’t think he likes us very well, but he wouldn’t lift a hand to keep us from ruining you. He’s not capricious, even though he’s a treacherous old dog.
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