Wheels within Wheels Read online

  He had a large radio fitted into his bookcase, and at the hour when the majority of European broadcasting stations were closed down it was often possible for him to tune in to New York and Chicago. The songs of Rudy Vallee’s orchestra were crooned across the three thousand miles of the Atlantic into the large, book-lined library. It pleased Frank Newton, sitting there, to compare the crowded night club; the bright dresses; the gay smiles; the animation; the excitement; the money being spent like water in a city where everything was turned to money, with the placidity of his study; the sober bindings; the dark oil-paintings in their setting of tarnished gilt; the dark velvet curtains; the thick pile carpet.

  It pleased him with that soft music whispering through the room, to let his memory wander.

  In a way he was happiest when he was alone. He was complete at such moments: like an organist before his organ, ready to pull out any stop. His contemporaries most of them were lost sight of or else dead. There was no one with whom he could now share more than a minute portion of his past. There were so many things, so many people of which he could not say to anyone “Do you remember?” Very often when the conversation suggested a certain episode, a certain characteristic, he was unable to mention it because his companion would be unaware of that episode and person. He had always to be placing a check upon himself. Alone in his study he could let his thoughts follow their own course. As often as not even when he did begin to read, the book, after a few moments, would fall forward on his knees and some phrase or episode in it would lead him to the current of his memory.

  This evening, however, though he turned the switch of his radio till the syncopated measures of a Chicago foxtrot filled the room, it was to his desk, not to his chair, he turned. That afternoon’s conversation had convinced him of one thing: that he had not the right yet to retire completely from the arena. He had obligations towards others. He owed it to his wife and daughter to make as much money as he was able. He had no right because he was tired and without ambition to fling away a chance of making thousands. He must take care of his work. He must follow up the specialist’s report. Taking from his desk a sheet of paper, he addressed an envelope to Josef Bergheim, the New York stockbroker, through whom he had made his preliminary investigations.

  IV

  A Week later the letter was opened in a New York office.

  It was a typical February day. A bitter wind was blowing from the Hudson. The puddles in the streets were glazed with ice. But the sky was blue over the tall towers of Manhattan and the steam-heated rooms were bright with sunlight and a sense of summer.

  In his office on the forty-seventh floor of the Equitable building Mr. Josef K. Bergheim sat at his desk in shirt sleeves. Through a tight-closed window the thunder of down-town New York purred faintly. The grey-blue of the East River had a tempting coolness. A liner rounding the battery on its way to the Atlantic poignantly suggested freedom. Bergheim watched it pensively. He was hot. The ash-tray at his side was thick-piled with cigar stubs. The wastepaper basket by his desk was filled with cone-shaped containers of iced water.

  He was a little man: bald and fat and old: with a greasy complexion and large Jewish nose. Seated at his desk in a swivel chair he had the appearance of a heathen idol. There was something inanimate about him. Only his eyes lived. They were little and brown, buried in rolls of flesh; but they were keen. At a first sight you would have called them crafty, but they were not that. They were watchful, and they were wise. They gave an impression of seeing landscapes other than those they rested on. It was his eyes that made you feel he was something more than a little Jew in a New York office who sold shares, and floated companies; through whose hands much money passed and some remained.

  He read Frank Newton’s letter with interest, but without excitement. So Newton was ready to continue with his gamble. He wanted the syndicate for reasons of Income Tax to be registered in New York; he asked Bergheim if he would find a certain percentage of the capital.

  There should be no difficulty in that. Never had money been more accessible. It was dear: at eight to nine per cent. But it was there for any one who chose to ask for it. Any reasonable scheme and a great many that were not reasonable were floated by the mere fact of their announcements. A few letters and a few telephone calls would have settled this question of Santa Marta within a small number of hours.

  By lunch time he had within call half of the support he needed. Later in the day there was announced Roy Bauer, the man on whom he relied for the remainder.

  • • • • •

  At a first glance Bauer looked so like the caricature of a typical American that you did not believe he was quite real. He was tall and broad and plump, like a middle-aged boy, with a damp, clean-shaven face. His neck bulged over his stiff turnover collar. His tie was gaudy, with broad stripes of blue and orange that in England would have been held to denote the membership of some club. He wore no waistcoat. His coat was unbuttoned. His sleeves were pressed so that the creases were lifted like gabled roofs. An eversharp pencil, a fountain pen and two cigars wrapped in celophane protruded from his breast pocket. His stomach bulged against the leather belt that sustained his trousers. His voice was loud, his manner hearty. He entered the room as though he had just returned from a long sea voyage.

  “Gee, but it’s good to see you, Mr. Bergheim. It certainly is good of you to ask me round. And how’s the market? Recovering all right? I reckon so. Just a little settling of itself, that’s all. When a country’s as sure-founded as this one is, nothing can go wrong with it for long. My word, when I think of the change in New York during the fifteen years I’ve been here: when I think of the changes I’ve seen since I was born back in Cleveland in that dry-goods store! I never thought then that I’d be living in a swell apartment in Tudor City. One thing certainly does lead to another. I’ll say it does. A village lane becomes the main street of a town; the little shop at the corner is a store five storeys high. The town becomes a city. The store has been sold to a chain of other stores. Before the owner of that little shop knows what he’s doing, he’s in a big office in New York, the big noise of a chain of stores. His old mother’s in a cosy little apartment with her own maid. There’s a grand girl that he goes places with at night. Oh boy, if you could see the look on my mother’s face at times! She thinks she’s living in a fairy tale. And as for that girl, oh boy and how! You just should see her!”

  Bergheim smiled.

  With his mind’s eye he could see that mother: the little, timid, surprised, adoring person; so different from the culture-minded woman of contemporary satire; who had been wooed and won in some Bavarian village; who had been transported across the ocean by her peasant husband; who had found herself year by year lifted into stranger and stranger settings; with none of it ever seeming real; with her memory wondering what had happened to the boy and girl who had vowed under a German hedgerow such fine things for one another.

  He could picture her as clearly as he could understand the confident, boisterous son who thought just because he had happened to be born in Cleveland when the Middle West was booming that he had made the elevator and was working it. Roy Bauer had the aggressive confidence of an easily-won success.

  And as for the girl, well, he remembered Caroline. And she hadn’t been so grand as all that when she had come up to his apartment in the West Eighties; on the nights when the boys were there, with the radio playing; with ice chinking against glasses. There’d been bridge and backgammon in the one room and in the other dancing and heaven knew what else besides. Caroline had been content enough to come and have a good time with them. She hadn’t turned up her nose when she’d found a ten dollar bill in her bag next morning. She was a grand lady now: with an apartment in Tudor City, a charge account at Lord and Taylor’s and the idea that no frock was new that had been worn four times. There wasn’t much that Roy could tell him.

  “Now listen, Mr. Bauer. The thing I’ve to put up to you is this. You told me the other day that you had some money that y
ou’d like to gamble with. At that time I hadn’t anything in view. I have now. It’s an oil well in the French West Indies. There’s a reasonable chance of making yourself very rich. If you can afford to lose twenty thousand dollars for the chance of making a quarter of a million, here’s your chance.”

  Leaning back in his swivel chair, his legs crossed, Bauer drew a cigar from his pocket, ripped off the celophane, bit off the end, spat it into the wastepaper basket.

  “And to think how I’d have felt twenty years ago if I had been told that I could talk airily about losing twenty thousand dollars.”

  As, twenty years ago, thought Bergheim, it would have maddened him to have heard anybody like Bauer boasting in that way. Himself he had eschewed short cuts to wealth. He had followed in a new country the hereditary tactics of his race. He had not speculated. He had let others speculate. He had been the middleman. His clients had made millions while he had drawn his minute brokerage. They had lost thousands; he had drawn his brokerage on their losings. He had made money slowly while on all sides of him men in a mushroom city were losing it quickly, making it quickly. He had felt resentful of their quick successes. He had gloated over their reverses. He had been tempted to follow their example and plunge on Wall Street. He had stayed his hand, however, and though wealth had come, it had come slowly, it had come too late. At fifty he was a rich man, but he had lost the capacity for enjoyment. He was rich. Soon he would be very rich. Money was like a snowball going down a hill. It became an avalanche as it reached the ground. But what use was it to him now? At fifty he had been bitter. Now, twenty years later, with life loaned to him on a short lease, he regretted the passage of youth no longer. He was content to be an onlooker. He liked sitting here in his down-town office, watching the greyhound liners round the battery, with the tape machine ticking across its messages with Western Union envelopes, with telephones recording the traffic of the world’s activities.

  He enjoyed, in his down-town club, listening while he drank his lime and tonic water, to his juniors boastfully comparing their morning’s gains, talking of the rich future that lay ahead.

  In the late afternoon he would take the subway to West Central Park. The swaying figures in the moving cage recalled him to reality. This was the soil from which wealth flowered. It was from this anonymity that he had risen. It was to such a shared anonymity he would return.

  It was with no feeling of repulsion, of glorification, of pity, but of interest, merely, that he scanned evening after evening, the damp, tired faces, the unshaven jowls, the ragged collars, the threadbare clothes dotted here and there with a splash of colour; a smartly-dressed, eager-eyed young woman, a boy with pressed trousers and neatly knotted tie, whose feet were already set upon the road to fortune. Evening after evening he would sit before dinner on the terrace of his pent house looking out over the incredible panorama of New York: over the dark expanses of Central Park towards the turretted skyline of Fifty-ninth Street; his hands folded on his lap, pondering the varieties of life that were spread beneath him; feeling himself like a centipede with a foot in a hundred worlds.

  Later there would be the boys coming round: Jews, all of them, to talk, to play bridge, to drink. There would be the radio; girls to dance with. He would be listening and he would be watching, feeling that life kept its richest wine till last. He was beyond jealousy and resentment. He did not care whether Roy Bauer lost his twenty thousand or cleared his quarter of a million. It would be amusing to see him flushed with triumph. It would be amusing to see him frightened by a reverse. But he did not care.

  “Then you’d like to go in on this gamble?”

  “I certainly would. I can afford to lose twenty thousand bucks. You’ll need some more collateral for my account?”

  “I imagine so.”

  “I’ll send you enough to take over some more Westinghouse.”

  “You’ve a good block already.”

  “One can always do with a little more of a good thing.”

  “Very well.”

  The order was given far less because Bauer wanted a further block of shares than because he wanted to impress Bergheim: in the same way that a young man about town, a little uncertain of himself who goes into his hosiers for an evening tie, will in order to impress the salesman order three ordinary ties, a pair of socks and a couple of day shirts. Bergheim realized this.

  “I’ll send you along an account of the transaction by this evening’s mail.”

  • • • • •

  Roy Bauer walked with an easy, exultant stride towards the elevator. To own an oil field; to be able to say to his friends: “My oil field in the West Indies is certainly paying me swell royalties;” to watch his old mother’s eyes glad with wonder when he told her; to say to Caroline: “Say, honey, you needn’t worry yourself about that charge account. I’m a rich man now. Why don’t you get yourself a bigger car? I like to see my girl in a big car.”

  There was going to be no smarter girl in Manhattan. He’d see to that. She was a lovely creature: slim and slight; with her wave of cool blonde hair, her plucked eyebrows, her figure that hadn’t a spare inch of flesh on it. It was the kind of figure that it was worth spending money on: that could be made to look expensive. He loved her in green best. She was so flower-like in green. The small head rising out of its sheath of leaves. It was grand walking at her side into the Hollywood or Warwick, with people turning their necks to look at her; saying to themselves: “She’s carrying a thousand dollars on her back.” Gee, but it made him proud. You bet New York was a great city.

  He beamed at the elevator man, and at the boy with the pile of papers under his arms. The elevator man looked neat and dapper in his green uniform; the boy in his cloth suit and pointed shoes had an air of pride and independence. You wouldn’t find that anywhere but in America. In Europe elevator men were servile and called you “sir”; office boys had a timid, obsequious air. In America they stood on their feet square and faced the world, knowing that any one of them might grow to be rich and powerful, just as he had done.

  On the side walk he breathed deeply the keen cold air. It was like champagne. Yes, sir. One could accept prohibition in New York, just because of the air. That was all the alcohol one needed. Prohibition was no bad thing. People like himself could get all the liquor they wanted; the others went without, which meant that there weren’t any black Mondays now, with the engines working at half power. Fifteen per cent, improved efficiency, he had been told. He could well believe it.

  With a full heart he looked up at the skyscrapers that rose toweringly above him. They were symbols of success. They had risen overnight: like giant lilies reaching upwards to the skies; each one overtopping the other. From day to day the skyline altered; became higher, more turretted, more imposing. He was proud to be able to contribute to that vast success. He had the wind behind him.

  From his office window he could see through a narrow alley-way of buildings the wharves and funnels of East River. In its way his office was not unlike Bergheim’s. The same desk, the same three telephones, the swivel chair, the arm-chair for the client, the iced water, the slot of paper cones, the pile of cables, the newspapers, the messages.

  The telephone began to buzz as he took his seat. There began one of those long, interminable conversations that are described as “contact,” which are supposed to prepare the atmosphere for business, in which everything is discussed but business. He discussed the weather. He repeated a joke out of the New Yorker. He recounted an anecdote about a mutual friend.

  “And, oh boy,” he said, “I must tell you. I’m going to buy an oil field.”

  He talked about the oil field for five minutes, then rang off. He could not get the oil field out of his head. He longed to be able to tell his mother. He would like to ring her up. He was impatient to tell her the news that would make him seem grown up and important in her eyes. But it was best to wait; to tell her himself; to see her old face brighten, her eyes widen with wonder; to hear her say “You’re a marvel,
Roy!” Just as she had when he’d been a toddler and had staggered his first step across a room. He liked to bring his triumphs to her in person.

  But Caroline. That was different. He preferred ringing her up. He liked to hear that drawled, lazy voice; to picture that languid, exquisite, drooped figure on the sofa by the telephone, with its magazines scattered at its feet, its cigarettes, matches, manicure set, drawn to the table at its side. He liked to picture her there, waiting for his return, with no object outside him. To wait for him, to dress for him, to make herself beautiful for him. He liked, when he called her number, to hear her answer almost before his finger had left the dial of the “9,” to show him that she had been there: waiting.

  He dialled.

  There was the answer that he had expected: prompt and drawled.

  “Yes, this is Caroline Summers. Who is that?”

  Always the same. And with only a very slight heightening of the voice when he answered “It’s me, honey. Roy.”

  He liked her for that: her indifference, her reserve. It made him feel that she wasn’t easy; that he had to work to get her; that he had to earn her; with attention, gifts, diversions; with the payment of such tributes as this oil field.

  “Honey, I’ve the grandest news for you I’m going to buy an oil field.”

  “What’ll you do with that?”

  “Buy things for you.”

  “I’ll like that.”

  “You haven’t a diamond wrist-watch, have you?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll tell Renter’s to send you round a dozen or so, to choose from.”

  “I’ll like that.”