“We’re in a side street,” said Rose.
“I know,” said Hetty. “All the same …” At her request, they went west across Fifty-seventh Street. This took them past the fine concert hall that Mr. Carnegie, the steel magnate, had financed. The new millionaires might not always be elegant, but they certainly knew how to support the arts. “I was at the opening gala,” Hetty reminded her. “Tchaikovsky himself conducted.”
Soon after that, they were bowling up Central Park West. It was looking increasingly handsome these days. The Dakota had company: its sleeker sister, the Langham, was now on the next block up. Other splendid buildings also stared across the park.
At the Dakota, Lily de Chantal was already waiting downstairs. The years had been good to her; she still looked handsome. The two women embraced, and sat in the back seat together, while Rose moved to the front beside the chauffeur.
“We’ll go to Riverside Drive first,” said Hetty.
The Upper West Side might not be so fashionable, but it had many fine streets. On West End Avenue, there were houses with wide reception halls, splendid curving staircases, and music rooms or libraries. Some of the apartment buildings were truly magnificent—in one place, an exquisite facade that might have come from gothic Flanders, only stacked twice as high; in another, a huge, rusticated, red-brick block, big as a castle, and crowned with the bulbous mansards of France’s belle époque. The people who lived there—doctors, professors, owners of middle-sized businesses—paid a lot less than the people across the park, and lived very well indeed. But it was as they came to the high and magnificent sweep of Riverside Drive above the Hudson, that Hetty exclaimed: “There. That’s what I wanted to see.”
The sight before them, it had to be said, was quite extraordinary. The house had only just been completed. Its magnificent grounds occupied an entire block, and overlooked the Hudson far below.
It was a French Renaissance chateau, built in limestone, with turrets, and it contained seventy-five rooms. Even the biggest mansions of Fifth, because of their cramped sites, looked bourgeois by comparison. Its owner, Mr. Charles Schwab, having the boldness and intelligence to realize that the city’s greatest asset was the magnificent view over the Hudson River, and ignoring timid fashion entirely, had, like a true prince, built his mansion where he liked. They might not know it, but he had left them—Astors, Vanderbilts, everyone, save maybe Pierpont Morgan—far behind. His former boss and partner, Andrew Carnegie, said it all. “Have you seen Charlie’s place? Makes mine look like a shack.”
They stopped the Rolls for several minutes in front of the gateway to admire the place. Rose had to confess that, West Side or not, it was something to talk about.
“Now,” Hetty announced, “we’ll go up to Columbia University.” She smiled. “We’re going to pay a call on young Mr. Keller.”
“Mr. Keller?” Rose’s face fell.
“Why yes, dear. My friend Theodore Keller’s son. He’s expecting us.”
“Oh,” said Rose. And she looked thoughtful. She did not want to see Mr. Keller, of Columbia. She did not want to see him at all.
The journey up Riverside Drive was beautiful. They passed several people on bicycles. For it was all the rage these days to ride up to the great mausoleum over the Hudson where Ulysses Grant and his wife were now entombed.
“I wish I could do that,” Hetty remarked.
Before getting that far, they turned east, passed by the site where the mighty Anglican cathedral of St. John the Divine was arising, and came to the campus.
Columbia University was already a college of some antiquity. Having begun its life downtown in the mid-eighteenth century, as the mainly Anglican King’s College, it had later changed its name, relocated to mid-town, and only a decade ago moved once more, to the splendid site at 115th and Broadway. The campus was already handsome; indeed, the broad dome of the Low Library that presided over it could have graced Harvard or Yale.
It was now, as they pulled up, that Rose tried the only ploy she could think of.
“I’ll wait for you in the car,” she declared, and indicated to the chauffeur that he should escort the two old ladies in. But it was no use.
“Oh you can’t do that, dear,” said Hetty. “He knows you’re bringing us. That would seem awfully rude.”
So a few minutes later, she found herself in the pleasant office of an athletic man in his late twenties, with dark brown hair and bright blue eyes, who had placed three armchairs before his desk, and was clearly delighted to see them.
“Welcome to my lair,” said Mr. Edmund Keller with a pleasant smile. There were bookshelves round the walls, a print of the Mona Lisa, and a photograph of Niagara Falls, taken by his father. A glance at the books revealed that he was a classical scholar and historian. Rose allowed herself to be introduced, then tactfully kept silent.
“Lily and I saw your father only the other day,” Hetty declared. “He stopped round at my house for tea.”
Rose let them chatter. She remembered that Theodore Keller lived on East Nineteenth Street, only a stone’s throw from Gramercy Park, and she knew of course that old Frank Master had been the photographer’s patron. And that was all well and good. But his son was another matter entirely. She’d heard what kind of character young Mr. Edmund Keller was, and she’d heard it from an unimpeachable source. To be exact, from no less a person than the president of Columbia University himself.
Nicholas Murray Butler was a very impressive man. He was a distinguished academic, internationalist and political figure. President Theodore Roosevelt called him a friend, and his views were as sound as they were conservative. Everybody said he was doing great things with Columbia. So if he had suspicions about young Mr. Keller, you could be sure it was for a very good reason.
She’d met Mr. Butler at a gala, and they’d chatted quite a while. She always took care to keep informed about everything that was going on in the city, so she’d listened carefully as he told her about the improvements he was making up at the university. They’d got along rather well. When she asked him if he was satisfied with the students applying, he’d answered yes, before adding in a low voice: “Perhaps too many Jews, though.”
Rose hadn’t anything against Jews herself. Some of the most notable men in New York—people like the great banker Schiff, whom even Morgan held in high regard—were Jewish and one met them socially. The old German Jewish families that lived on the Upper West Side, or in the pleasant suburb of Harlem now, were often highly respectable.
Of course, the masses of poor Jews who had flooded into the Lower East Side during the last quarter-century were quite another matter. One felt sorry for them, naturally—they’d been fleeing those terrible pogroms in Russia and places like that. But such people. She’d seen them, of course, in that noisy, bustling quarter, and she couldn’t imagine that they would provide the genteel young men that Mr. Nicholas Murray Butler would want.
“Don’t misunderstand me,” he’d continued. “I have distinguished Jewish professors, and we take in plenty of Jewish boys. But I have to limit the numbers, or they’ll swamp the place.”
It was then, trying to think of something else to say, and remembering she’d heard that Theodore Keller’s son was teaching at Columbia, that she’d mentioned his name. And she’d been quite surprised when Butler’s brow had darkened.
“You know him?” he’d asked.
“Not personally.”
“Hmm.” He’d hesitated. “He is entitled to his opinions, of course, but I may have some political differences with him.”
“Oh? Serious ones?”
Again he’d paused. “Well, I go only by things he has said in public, but I have the impression—no, I must say that I believe—that Edmund Keller’s views are socialistic.”
Rose Master did not know a great deal about socialists. One heard about them, of course, in places like Russia, and even in more familiar European countries, too. Socialists, communists, anarchists, revolutionaries. People who had no resp
ect for private property. People without roots, or morals. She remembered something a British politician had told her at a dinner party, when she and William had made their visit to London. “These people would take away every individual freedom we have. They call us capitalists, whatever that may mean, and say our capitalism is evil. That is their excuse for destroying everything we cherish. If they had their way we’d become servants of an all-embracing state, like the oriental empire of Genghis Khan. Moreover, because they believe they are right, they will do anything—they will create strikes, they will kill, and they will lie, they will always lie—to achieve their ends.”
“A socialist. That’s terrible,” she’d said to Mr. Nicholas Murray Butler.
“I hope I’m mistaken,” he’d said, “but I believe his opinions tend that way.”
“What will you do?”
“Columbia is a university, Mrs. Master. I’m not a policeman. But I keep an eye on him.”
So now, as Hetty and Lily chatted to the seemingly pleasant young man, Rose watched him also, as carefully as one might watch an alligator or a snake.
By and by, Hetty remarked that Rose had brought them in a Rolls-Royce. Rose observed Keller intently now; the thought of such a capitalist luxury would surely bring a glint of rage to his eye.
“Rolls-Royce?” He was looking straight at her. His eyes were very blue, intense. “Which model?”
“My husband calls it a Silver Ghost,” she answered reluctantly, watching him more closely than ever.
But his face lit up with joy.
“The Silver Ghost? That’s just been tested? Side valve? Six cylinders, three and three? A trembler coil with a magneto as well?” He had almost jumped up from his desk. “A masterpiece. However did you get it so soon? Oh, I should love to see that. May I see it?”
“You can see it when you escort us down,” said Hetty pleasantly.
“Well,” added Lily, “it seems we’ve made your day.”
“You have,” he answered, with charming frankness.
But Rose wasn’t fooled. She remembered what she’d been told. They lie. They always lie.
Ten minutes later, they were down in the street. To the great amusement of the two old ladies, Mr. Keller even had the chauffeur open the hood so he could inspect the engine. Once he had finished, he beamed at them all, before saying farewell.
“Now, the next time you come to see your father, you must promise to look in to see me, too,” Hetty told him. “It’s only up the street.”
“Certainly I will,” he replied.
“Now, dear,” the old lady turned to Rose, “you’d better give Mr. Keller your card so that he can call upon you too. I’m sure William would be delighted to take him out in the car. They can talk about the engine.”
“That’s very kind,” said Keller. “I’d enjoy that.”
Rose’s face turned to stone. No doubt you would, she thought. But if Edmund Keller with his socialist ideas supposed he was going to insinuate himself into her house, he was mistaken.
“I haven’t a card with me,” she heroically lied. “But I will send one,” she added, without enthusiasm.
“Don’t worry,” said Hetty. From her small handbag, she took one of her own cards, together with a little silver pencil, and wrote Rose’s address on the back. “It’s easy to find. Just around the corner from the Gotham Hotel.”
“Thank you. I’ll call,” said Keller, as they drove off.
“Well,” said Hetty, “wasn’t that nice?”
Early that evening, when William got home, Rose told him all about it. He listened and nodded, but seemed preoccupied. Then he told the butler to bring him a large whiskey.
“It’s been a pretty bad day on the markets,” he said.
“I’m sorry, dear.” She smiled understandingly. “I’m sure it’ll get better …”
“Maybe.” He frowned, drank his whiskey, and went upstairs to see the children. At dinner, she brought the subject of Keller up again, and he said, “I could just take him out in the car, and get it over with.” But that wasn’t what she wanted. She was determined that Mr. Keller should never darken her door. At the end of dinner, William said he was tired and went off to bed.
So she could only sigh. She’d have to try and deal with Keller herself.
On Friday afternoon, William Vandyck Master entered Trinity Church, Wall Street. He sat down in one of the pews near the back. Then he started to pray.
Trinity was a fine church. Thanks to its land endowments back in the seventeenth century, the church still owned much of the area. It was rich, and it had used its money wisely and well. It had founded numerous other churches in the growing city, while the Trinity vestry had been the first to provide education for the city’s Negro population at a time when many other congregations disapproved. And for all its wealth, the interior of the church retained a pleasant simplicity. There was a single stained-glass window at the east end; all the other windows were plain, and bathed the interior in a soft light. The walls were wood-paneled. It almost reminded William of a library, or a club—but if so, a club of which the kindly Deity was certainly a member.
William wasn’t very religious. He went to church; he supported the vicar. It was what you did. He didn’t pray much—just in church on Sundays, really. But although it was only Friday, he was trying to pray today. For he was very much afraid.
He was about to lose everything he had.
When you thought about it, William considered, there were only two ways to make a lot of money on Wall Street. The first was the more conservative. You persuaded people to pay you to manage their money, or even just to move it, from one place to another. That was the banker’s way. If the sums were large enough—if you could persuade a government, for instance, to put its funds in your hands—then the fee, or the tiny percentage on the transaction you took, could amount to a fortune.
The second way was to gamble.
Of course, gambling with only your own money was unlikely to get you very far. You needed to borrow huge sums. Borrow a million, make ten percent, return it with a little interest, and you’d just made nearly a hundred thousand. And all the transactions that you might undertake, the complex bets that you placed on the future price of this or that, the hedging of positions, the science and the art still came down to this one and only fundamental: you were placing bets with someone else’s money.
In the process, naturally, you might lose their money from time to time. And so long as they didn’t know you’d lost their money, you should be able to string them along, and borrow some more, and recoup it. But at some point—perhaps far off, or if there was a panic, horribly soon—you would have to pay them back.
William Vandyck Master couldn’t pay. He’d done the numbers. His obligations exceeded his assets. And now that a panic had started, everyone wanted their money. He was wiped out.
He hadn’t told Rose. There wasn’t much point. Anyway, he couldn’t. So there was just himself and God, now, to discuss the position. And he was wondering whether, by any chance, God would care to bail him out.
If only he’d done what his father wanted. William knew he’d disappointed him. Tom Master’s dream had always been that his son would be a banker. A real banker. And when Tom Master said a real banker, William knew that his father had only one man in mind.
J. P. Morgan. The mighty Pierpont. His father’s hero. Since the days when he’d started reorganizing the railroads, the great banker had moved into shipping, mining, all kinds of industrial production. When he put together the great combination that was U.S. Steel, it became the mightiest industrial corporation ever known to man. The power of the House of Morgan was huge, and through its board directorships, it controlled industries worth far over a billion dollars.
Morgan’s reach was global. He ruled, and lived, like a king. And was feared like a king as well. Perhaps more than a king. Perhaps a god. Jupiter, the men on Wall Street called him.
When William was still at Harvard, Tom Master had man
aged to get him an interview with the great man. Morgan’s reputation was fearsome and William had been pretty terrified, but Morgan had sent word that he should come to his house on Thirty-sixth Street in the evening, and when he’d been ushered into the great man’s presence, he’d found the banker in a gentle mood.
Morgan was sitting at a long table. The curtains were drawn, the lamps lit. His tall frame, leonine head and bulbous nose were just as William had expected. The angry stare of his eyes was legendary, yet alone in his home, his eyes seemed almost soft. One end of the table was piled with ancient books. At the other end, still in its wrapping, a marble classical head, and, on a dark cloth, a collection of gemstones—sapphires, rubies and opals—that glowed softly in the lamplight. Open in the middle of the table was an illuminated medieval manuscript that the great man had just been inspecting.
What did Morgan look like, William wondered: an ogre in his den? A pirate surrounded by his treasure? A Renaissance prince, a Medici? Or something more Celtic, rich and strange: Merlin the magician, perhaps?
“Look at this,” he invited young William.
William looked down at the illuminated page. The colors were rich. The gold leaf shone mystically.
“It’s beautiful, sir.” He’d heard that Morgan spent a good part of the bank’s huge profits buying such things.
“It is,” Morgan murmured, then turned his attention away from the treasure to his guest. “We’ll sit down.” He motioned William toward a pair of leather armchairs by the fire. As soon as they were seated he began. “Your father tells me you like machines.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Study engineering?”
“It’s a hobby.”
“Mathematics?” The eyes, like shuttered coal furnaces now, were resting on him.
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