”I don't. But I'll need your word.”
“You have it.”
Charley Murtree pulled the cord.
“Walk with me, Mr. Beckwith.” Gould's soft voice came from the carriage drive outside. He'd gone out some other way. A secret passage would not have surprised Tilden. The small man gathered his lapels across his thin chest although the day was mild. He stifled a cough, then gestured toward his greenhouse, indicating it as their direction. He did not offer his hand when Tilden joined him. He kept both behind his back.
“That business with Morgan”—Gould almost smiled— “walking through the exchange with his arm around you. Neatly done, Mr. Beckwith. Very neatly done indeed.”
Tilden saw no point in admitting that he scarcely knew what was happening at the time.
“Has it occurred to you, sir,” Gould asked, “that your maneuver with Morgan had an element of fraud to it? You were, after all, implying a close tie with him for the purpose of improving your income.”
“Mr. Gould.” Tilden stopped. “If you hope to establish that your standards and mine are the same at bottom, it's going to be a long afternoon.”
“Ah yes, my standards.” Gould began walking again, shook his head, then stopped once more. ”I am trying, Mr. Beckwith, to communicate with you. Clumsily, perhaps, I am trying to find common ground. Please do not be so arrogant as to reduce our relationship to good versus evil.”
Gould had a point and Tilden knew it. He was playing the white knight against Gould's dark angel. With another man, Tilden might have apologized for being tiresome.
“You once purchased some intelligence from Colonel Mann. Correctly used, it could have caused me some embarrassment. I am told you declined to use it at all. Why was that, Mr. Beckwith?”
“That intelligence concerned Carling, not you.”
“But still you did not use it.”
Tilden drew a breath. “All I wanted of Carling was that he leave New York before I killed him. as it happened, he left of his own accord.”
Gould did not dispute on whose account Carling had left. “You could have hurt me with it. The fact that he duped me with a false history could have cost me the confidence of some men and encouraged boldness in others. The fact that he was actually a Jew named Koenig would have been delicious to those who insist that I am a denied Jew myself.”
“Extortion is Colonel Mann's field, Mr. Gould,” Tilden answered. ”I do not care to compete in it. In any event, I'm sure it would not have bothered you in the slightest.”
“If you prick us, sir, do we not bleed?”
Tilden sighed. ”I know that you are not a Jew, sir. Not that I care a damn one way or the other.”
“How do you know?”
“My father told me.”
“He told you what?” Gould raised a hand upon seeing Tilden's impatience with this irrelevancy. “Please. Indulge my curiosity on this and I will satisfy any of yours.”
“He said,” Tilden answered with strained patience, “that you come from Yankee Protestant stock. He said that this Jewish business persists only because there is so little else that is vulnerable about you and because you encourage it. He remarked that you are wise enough not to reward such people with even a denial. Better to let them chew on it, be distracted by it, he said.”
“While I do what, exactly?”
“My father's words or mine?”
”I have an idea I'd like your father's better.”
“He... appreciates you,” Tilden admitted, “though with reservations. He has approximately the same attitude toward Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, and the entire British nation.”
“That I am a plunderer, you mean.” Gould seemed disappointed.
“No.” Tilden softened. “He does admire your tenacity. It is a quality I have observed in you myself.”
Gould suddenly bent forward. A coughing fit swelled and then burst from his chest. Tilden saw a spray of blood in the handkerchief he held. Gould did not have the look of a man who had time for much more mischief.
“And you, Mr. Beckwith,” he gasped as he recovered, “what do you think of me? I ask, not to invite an insult, but to understand the mind of a man who would choose me as an enemy without hope of gain.”
“There actually are men who act out of decency, sir. My father is one of them. I do my best to follow his example.”
“Not in all things, it seems. He did not condemn me so roundly as you do.”
“No,” Tilden had to acknowledge. “In truth he did not.”
“He is quite a remarkable man,” Tilden's father had said to him. “He has built a great fortune upon the single premise that most other men are thieves at heart. He is not at all like the other money-getters and manipulators. They are opportunists for the most part. They are raiders and profiteers. They attack and they withdraw. But Jay Gould keeps coming with a dreadful and unshakable singleness of purpose, for he always has a plan that looks several moves ahead, in the manner of a chess champion. The tenacity of this feared and silent little man is his power, you see.
“Imagine if the devil himself appeared in New York and stood on the sidewalk outside the exchange, staring at it by the hour, then at last letting his eyes grow narrow and permitting a smile to pull at the corners of his mouth. Why, you'd have traders scrambling out the windows and running for their lives up the hill toward Trinity Church. Jay Gould has nearly the same effect. He has but to cast an interested eye upon a business firm and its shareholders fall over each other getting out of harm's way. When the timid have sold enough shares and the price of the rest is low enough, Gould buys control. Now it is the investors who sit and watch like vultures. Did Gould buy this company because it is an inconvenience to his larger schemes and is therefore to be destroyed? Or is it essential to his schemes and therefore to be raised up? They watch the stock prices. If they begin rising, those who would ride on Jay Gould's coattails leap aboard and force them quickly higher. The prudent ones take a decent profit and get out. The reckless ones stay, confident that they can scurry for cover at the first sign that Gould is setting another ambuscade tor them.
“Gould, of course, is watching them as well. At the first sign of caution he will lull them with good news through some newspaper or politician he controls. When their guard: is down, when they begin buying all the more heavily, he will knock out the pins and catch them all. I see little evil in this, Tilden, because the victims all know the game they are in and are most often defeated by their own greed. And yet they groan and tear their hair and rail against this ‘silent little Jew’ and his trickery.”
“It is said of me”—Jay Gould stopped at the door of his immense greenhouse—“that I see all men and their works as my lawful prey. It is said that I see good in no one. That kindness, loyalty, honesty, and all the other virtues are foreign to me. In my heart, Tilden Beckwith, I believe this not to be true. But I have chosen, upon hard lessons, to live my life with the certain knowledge that any man I trust will turn and feed on me sooner or later. I am not often disappointed. This Ansel Carling business came as no great disillusionment.”
“It is true that he's dead, by the way?”
Gould nodded. “We are both well rid of him. But I'm afraid he will haunt you far longer than me. If you had used that intelligence of Colonel Mann's, you are quite correct that it would not have bothered me. But I would, have turned it on you. I would have caused it to be widely known that your little boy, the one you named Huntington, is not a Beckwith at all but the son of a Jewish former convict, swindler, and assassin named Asa Koenig.” ·
Tilden's eyes flared but Gould raised both hands. “Mann lied to you, of course. He tried to sell it to me first. I'd have no part of it.”
“What is it you want, then?”
“Come.” He opened the door at one end of the greenhouse. ”I will show you something very beautiful.”
The greenhouse, which Tilden had seen upon entering Lyndhurst, was fully three times the size of the largest he had ever
seen before. It was warmed to a tropical climate by a series of copper stoves upon which kettles of water simmered, causing a mist of fine rain to hang in the air.
There were orchids everywhere. Thousands of them.
‘‘It is where I find peace,” Gould whispered as if in a church. “When the sun is right, you can see a rainbow in here.” He pinched a withered leaf off a nearby plant and touched the wound gently with his fingertips. ”I have developed several new varieties, you know. The Horticultural Society has given my name to two thus far, and to a new rose as well.”
Tilden wondered if his family received such affection. “Where is your family, by the way?” he asked, remembering the empty house, which had seemed so ominous.
“On my yacht,” Gould answered absently, “taking the sea air.” He saw an ant on the labellum of one of his prize lady's slippers. He brushed it off.
“And your servants? I saw no butler.”
Gould looked up. “You suspect a snare, don't you.” He smiled. “There is no butler here, Mr. Beckwith. Nor are there liveried footmen standing at every door with doubtful coats of arms etched on their buttons. I have no interest in that foolishness. There are two cooks and two maids here at Lyndhurst, and perhaps a dozen groundskeepers and gardeners. That is all.”
“And your bodyguards.”
“And my bodyguards,” Gould acknowledged. “They are also companions. Have you ever tried to converse with a butler? Men of business are even worse. They choose their words so carefully, even on superficial matters. Ask one of them the time of day and he'll wonder what design is behind your question.”
Probably with good reason, Tilden thought. Gould was attempting to relax him, although he did not know how the man could hope for it in view of the language of the note he'd sent. Your harlot mistress. Your hidden son. Comstock.
Jay Gould seemed to read his mind. ”I wanted you to come see me,” he said slowly. ”I thought it best to use language you could not ignore. There was a reference to the lady, Margaret—Charlotte, if you prefer—for which I apologize most abjectly now that you are here.”
“But Comstock is in Greenwich by your hand?’' Tilden asked darkly.
Gould shook his head. “That too was an artifice. The culprit is a retired tart named Belle Walker. It seems the presence of another like her caused her some discomfort and she wrote a letter which I think will be her own undoing. Your Margaret has no serious cause for concern in this instance. In any case, Mr. Comstock will soon be taking his leave. I happen to know that his crusade is about to be energetically discouraged by your old friend, Inspector Williams.”
Tilden waited, mildly stunned at the extent of Gould's knowledge and all the more doubtful of his claimed disassociation.
“No,” Gould said, smiling, “nor am I the agent of Cornstock’s departure. You have none other than Mrs. Williams to thank for that.”
“Clubber's wife?” Tilden nearly returned the smile.
“She's not another tart, if that's what you're wondering. Comstock made the mistake of accosting her on the street and taking her photograph.”
Tilden could no longer prevent a grin. He longed to rush home and share this news with Margaret. She would be greatly relieved, Laura Hemmings as well, although both of them feigned unconcern in his presence. But the grin faded as he considered that Jay Gould had not learned so much without purpose.
“Are you about to say what you want of me, Mr. Gould?”
“It is as before,” he said directly. ”I want you to withdraw your support from Cyrus Field.”
Tilden closed his eyes. “As my father said, you do keep coming, don't you, Mr. Gould?”
“This is important to me.”
“For God's sake, how? Haven't you found enough joy in knowing that a pissant like you could utterly shatter the health and fortune of a giant like Cyrus Field?”
”I took no joy in that. It was business.”
“Mr. Field is a businessman. You are a pirate. Mr. Field builds up. You tear down. The laying of the Atlantic cable made him wealthy, but there was a much greater risk that it would have broken him. You would not have taken that risk. You would have bought your way in when the terms were most favorable and then you would have plundered it just as you sought to plunder his New York Elevated.”
“His New York Elevated,” Jay Gould sighed. “His Atlantic cable. These are businesses, Mr. Beckwith. Not monuments. Cyrus Field was defeated in the end by his own vanity. And I pray you, sir, do not be so naive as to conclude that Mr. Field is exempt from greed or is above deceit. He tried to force me out of a business that was essential to other designs of mine. He tried it secretly and through guile. He bought shares under any name but his own in his effort to wrest control from myself and Russell Sage.”
“But you knew what he was doing. And you bushwhacked him.”
“Naturally.”
Tilden could only stammer.
“Is it possible that shocks you?” Jay Gould asked calmly. “The man had his agents buy seventy thousand shares in less than a year. His purchases alone, nearly all on margin by the way, drove the price from ninety-five dollars to a hundred and seventy-five. Sage and I dumped our shares on the market because their value had been inflated far beyond their worth and the profit was there to be taken. Is this not a first principle of investing, Mr. Beckwith?’'
Tilden could have argued. But he knew it was pointless. He could have noted that Gould picked the time when Cyrus Field was recklessly overextended and when the crash Gould engineered would have left him a literal pauper, but Gould would simply have asked, “What other time was there?” He could have argued that greed played no part in Field's actions, although vanity certainly did to some degree. But never greed. The shares he'd bought would never have stayed at the value to which he'd forced them. Nevertheless, he would have his elevated and the working classes would have cheap transport to their jobs and the city would expand marvelously because fully another third of Manhattan Island was now practical as a place of residence for them. Planners would come from all the great cities of the world to study this newest miracle he'd created and there would be no Jay Gould, no Russell Sage, to shake it and wring it dry. Oh, Mr. Field. If only you had been a bit less thoughtful of your place in history and a bit less innocent. But I will have to grant him it was as much suicide as murder.
“Fair enough, then.” Tilden withdrew on that issue. “But I admire him nonetheless and will not see him reduced further.”
”I admired him as well. I trusted him.”
“You trust no one.”
”I trusted him. He was the only one. He broke my heart.”
Once more, Tilden was dumbstruck. Had anyone, he wondered, even Jay Gould's wife, ever heard such words from him. And they seemed honest words. He saw the pain in the little man's eyes.
”I will tell you how Cyrus Field affected me.” Gould stepped closer to Tilden. “For twenty years I watched him as he did great things in apparent defiance of the laws of nature. How, I wondered, could a man who was trusting, loyal, and patient as a country parson not only survive in business but prosper. Here was a man who could walk through the valley of death happily sniffing a carnation. Here was a man who could trust in the protection of the Almighty and actually receive it. When I allied myself with him in the elevated business, I will admit to you, sir, that my first thought was to share in that protection. But I grew to admire the man and even love him. He had no great head for business and he was too much ambitious of sainthood but I held him in great esteem nonetheless.” A fire was growing behind the pain.
, “Even when he fought me,” Gould continued, “on the matter of doubling the fares, which of course is what fares are for, I yielded to his pleas that the higher fares would do great harm to people who were nothing to me, who would thank me not at all, and who would soon be fleeced out of the extra nickel I left in their pockets regardless. By that time I was so accustomed to Field's apparent altruism that it never occurred to me that he might h
ave some other design, that he might be secretly scheming with you and your father.”
Tilden, who had been following this with difficulty, was now lost. “What on earth are you talking about?’'
”I bear you no grudge for it. If I did, I'd have long since built a tannery next to each of your properties.”
“No grudge for what, sir?’'
“He did not want the fares increased because he feared that the higher tariff would make your northern real estate holdings less attractive. He was in them with you. He was a money-getter no less than the rest of us.”
Tilden felt dizzy. There was not a word of truth to it. Field had no interest at all in real estate, financial or otherwise. His interest was in systems. Communications. Shrinking the globe. But now Tilden was beginning to realize with growing horror that Cyrus Field's destruction was based upon a mistake. And worse, that Tilden’ s own persecution these past three years, the damage to his business, the violence to Margaret's peace of mind, even Ansel Carling's disastrous seduction of Ella and Ella's betrayal of him and of Cyrus Field, all followed from a single wrong suspicion in the dark little mind of this sick little man.
“Did you ever ask him if this was so?” Tilden's voice was suddenly hoarse.
“There was no need. Sage had good intelligence of it.”
“And you simply took the word of a grasping miser who won't spend more than ten dollars for a suit of clothing, and you began baiting traps for Mr. Field.”
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