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"Tiger" Waldron's interview with old man Flint, regarding Catherine's breaking of the engagement, was particularly electric. Promptly at the appointed hour, Waldron appeared, shook hands with the older man, sat down and lighted a cigar, then proceeded to business.
"Flint," said he, without any ado, "I've come here to tell you some very unpleasant news and to ask your help. Can you stand the one, and give me the other?"
The Billionaire looked at him through his pince-nez, poised on that vulture-beak, with some astonishment. Then he smiled nervously, showing his gleaming tooth of gold, and answered:
"Yes, I guess so. What's wrong?"
"What's wrong? Everything! Catherine has broken our engagement!"
For a moment old Flint sat there motionless and staring. Then, moving his head forward with a peculiar, pecking twitch that still further enhanced his likeness to a buzzard, he stammered:
"You—you mean—?"
"I mean just what I say. Your daughter has severed the betrothal. Haven't you noticed my ring was gone from her finger?"
"Gone? Bless my soul, no—that is, yes—maybe. I don't know. But—but at any rate, I thought nothing of it. So then, you say—she's broken it off? But, why? And when? And—and tell me, Wally, what's it all about?"
"Listen, and I will tell you," Tiger answered. "And I'll give it to you straight. I'm partly at fault. Mostly so, it may be. Let me assume all the blame, at any rate. I'm not sparing myself and have no intention of doing so. My conduct, I admit, was beastly. No excuses offered. All I want to do, now, is to make the amende honorable , be forgiven, and have the former status resumed."
Thus spoke Waldron. But all the time his soul lay hot within him, at having so to humble himself before Flint; at being thus obliged to eat crow, and fawn and feign and creep.
"If I didn't need your billion, old man," his secret thought was, as he eyed Flint with pretended humility, "you might go to Hell, for all of me—you and your daughter with you, damn you both!"
The Billionaire sat blinking, for a moment. Then, picking up a pencil and idly scrawling pothooks on the big clean sheet of blotting-paper that covered his reference-book table, beside which the men were sitting, he asked:
"Well, what's the trouble all about? What are the facts? I must have those, in full, before I can guarantee to do anything toward changing my daughter's opinion. Much as I deplore her action, Wally, I don't know whether she's right or wrong, till you tell me. Now, let's have it."
"I will," the other answered; and he was as good as his word. Realizing the prime futility of any subterfuge, or any misstatement of fact—which Catherine would surely discover and tell her father, and which would react against him—Waldron began at the beginning and narrated the entire affair, with every detail precisely accurate. Nay, he even exaggerated the offensiveness of his conduct, at the Longmeadow Club, and in various ways gave the Billionaire to understand that he was a more serious offender than in truth he really was. For, after all, the only real offense was the lack of any compatibility between the girl and himself—the total absence of love.
Flint listened carefully and with a judicial expression. If he blamed Waldron, he made no statement of that fact. A man himself, and one who viewed man's weaknesses and woman's foibles with a cynic eye, he could judge motives and weigh actions with considerable skill.
"I see, I see," he commented, when Waldron had quite done, and had poured forth a highly false declaration of his great love for the girl and his determination that this rupture should not be permanent. "I understand the case, I think. It all seems an unfortunate accident—just one of those unavoidable incidents which strike into and upset human calculations, against all expectation.
"You're not terribly guilty, Waldron. You acted inconsiderably. Irritatingly, perhaps, and not wholly like a gentleman—for which, blame the rotten Scotch they will persist in selling, out there at Longmeadow. But even that's not fatal. Many men have done worse and been forgiven. I'll have a talk with Catherine, inside a day or two, when the psychological moment offers. And you may be sure, if a father's advice and good offices are of any avail, this little quarrel will be all patched up between you two. Surely will be! I can almost positively promise you that!"
"Promise it?" asked Waldron, leaning eagerly forward, a strange light in those close-set, greenish eyes.
Flint nodded. "Yes," he answered. "I've never yet failed to bring Kate to reason and good common-sense, when I've set out to. This will be no exception. My word and my counsel possess the greatest weight with her. She'll listen and be advised, I'm sure. So have no uneasiness," he concluded, holding out his hand to his partner. "Leave everything to me. You'll see, it will all come right, in the end."
"Tiger" shook his hand, cordially.
"I haven't words to thank you!" he exclaimed, with as much emotion as he could simulate from a perfectly cold heart and calculating soul.
"Don't try to," the Billionaire replied, with seeming benevolence. "All the thanks I want, Wally, is to patch up this little difficulty and reunite two—that is—two loving, sympathetic hearts!"
"You old hypocrite!" Waldron thought, eyeing him. "All you want of me, if anything, is to keep me as your partner, because you know you're growing old and losing your grip, and I'm still in the game with all four claws! Paternal philanthropist you are—I don't think!"
Wally was dead right.
"I can't lose this man," the Billionaire was thinking. "Whether or no, Kate has got to marry him. This Air Trust business demands a strong, a quick, a perfectly unscrupulous hand. And no outsider will do. My partner has got to be my son-in-law. Love be damned! Romantic slush can go to Hell! Kate will marry him—she's got to—or I'll know the reason why!
"Though, after all," he soothed his conscience, as Waldron stood up, walked to the window and stood gazing out as he smoked, "after all, Wally will make her as happy, I fancy, as any man. He's a fine figure in the world, commanding, heavily propertied, energetic and successful, also of the finest family connections. Yes, a husband any woman might admire and be proud of. Certainly, the only son-in-law for me . Even if she can't idolize and worship him, as some fool women think they must, a man, she can respect and be respected with him. And with him she can take the highest position in the land, without a qualm as to his competence and manner. Beside all that, what's love? Love? Bah!"
With which philosophy, he too arose, went back into his own office, and returned to the dictating of some very private letters to Slade, the Cosmos Detective Agency manager, in re the ferreting-out and jailing or deporting of all Socialists and labor leaders at Niagara. This preparatory work on the ground of the huge new Air Trust plant, he deemed most essential. The Cosmos people, scenting a big contract, had fostered his belief, and now, already, the work was well under way. Subterranean methods were still sufficing; but, should these fail, others lay in the background.
Flint smiled a grim, vulturine smile as he read over the finished letters of instruction, a few minutes later.
"And to think," he mused, as he finished them, "that these fanatics believe—really believe—they can make headway anywhere in this country, now! Ten years ago, yes, they might have. But that's not today. Then, publie opinion—stupid and futile as it was—could still be aroused. Then, there was a really effective labor and Socialist press. And the Limited Franchise Bill hadn't gone through. Neither had the enlarged Military Bill, the National Censorship nor even the Grays—the National Mounted Police. While now —ah, thank Heaven, it's all so different and so easy that I call myself a fool, at times, for even giving these matters a single thought!
"Well," he concluded, handing the letters back to his confidential secretary, for mailing, "well, now that's done, at any rate. So then, to the S. & S. committee meeting. And tonight my little talk with Kate. I'll soon bring her to reason, I'm sure. There's nothing can't be accomplished by a little patience and persuasion."
The old Billionaire chose his time well, that night, for the vital interview with his daughter, who had so far rebelled against his authority as to break with the man most eminently acceptable to him. After a simple but exquisite dinner in the Venetian room, he asked the girl to play for him, which (he knew) always pleased her and put her in a receptive mood.
"Play for you, father?" she answered. "Of course I will, anything and as much as you like! What shall it be, tonight? Chopin, or Grieg, or—?"
"Anything that pleases you, suits me, my dear," he answered, smiling with satisfaction at his ruse. Never had he felt more masterful. He had allowed himself a trifle more morphia than usual that day, by reason of the approaching interview; and now the subtle drug filled him with well-being and seemed to enhance his self-control and power. Lighting a cigar—rare treat for him—he offered Kate his arm; and together, unattended by any valet or domestic, they walked along the high, paneled hallway, hung with Gobelin tapestries, and so reached the magnificent music-room which Kate claimed, in a way, as her own special place at Idle Hour.
Here everything suggested harmony. The mahogany wainscotted walls were decked with fine portraits of the world's great masters of melody. Handsome cabinets contained costly and elaborate collections and folios of music, a complete library of the entire world's best productions. The girl's harp—a masterpiece by Pestalozzi of Venice—stood at one side; on the other, a five hundred dollar Victrola, with a wonderful repertoire of records. But the grand piano itself dominated all, especially made for Catherine by Durand Frères, in Paris, and imported on the Billionaire's own yacht, the "Bandit." A wondrous instrument, this, finer even than the pipe-organ in an alcove at the far end of the room. It summed up all that the world's masters knew of instrument-production; and its cost, from factory to its present place at Idle Hour, represented twenty years' wages, and more, of any of Flint's slaves in the West Virginia mines or the Glenn Pool oil-fields of Oklahoma.
At this magnificent piano the girl now seated herself, on a bench of polished teak, from Mindanao. And, turning to her father, who had sunk down in his favorite easy-chair of Russia leather, she asked with a smile:
"Well, daddy, what shall I play for you, to-night?"
He looked at her a minute, before replying. Never had she seemed to dear, so beautiful to him. The rose-tinted light that fell softly from a Bohemian chandelier over her head, flooded her coiled hair, her face, her hands, with soft warm color. The slight dressing that her wound now required was covered by a deft arrangement of her hair. She had regained her usual tint. Nothing now told of the accident, the close call she had had, from death, so short a time before. And old Flint smiled, as he answered her:
"What shall you play? Anything you like, my dear. You know best—only, don't make it too classical. Your old father isn't up to that ultra music, you know, and never will be!"
She smiled again with understanding, and turned to the keyboard. Then, without notes, and with a delicate touch of perfectly modulated interpretation, she began to render "Traümerei," as though she, too, had been dreaming of something that might have been.
Flint listened, with perfect content. The music soothed and quieted him. Even the foreknowledge of the difficult task that lay before him, the interview that he must have with his daughter, faded from his mind, a little, and left him wholly calm. Eyes closed, every sense intent on the delicious harmony, he followed the masterpiece to the end; and sighed when the last notes had died away, and kept silence.
Then Kate, still needing no music on the rack before her, played the "Miserere" from "Il Trovatore," a Hungarian "Czardas," Mendelssohn's "Frühlingslied" and the overture from "William Tell." She followed these with the "Intermezzo" and the "Pizzicato" from "Sylvia," and then with "Narcissus" and "Sans Souci." And at the end of this, she paused again; for now her father had arisen and come close to her. With a hand on her shoulder, looking down at her with stern yet kindly eyes, he said:
"'Sans Souci'? That means 'Without Care,' doesn't it, Kate?"
"Yes, Daddy. Why?" she answered.
"Oh, I was just thinking, that's all," said he. "It made me wish I had no cares, no troubles, no sorrows."
"Sorrows, father? Why should you have sorrows?" she queried, turning to him and taking both his shriveled hands in her warm, strong ones.
"Sorrows? Why shouldn't I?" said he. "Every man of large affairs has them. Every father has them, too." And he bent over her and kissed her, with unusual emotion.
"Every father?" asked she. "What do you mean? Am I a sorrow to you?"
"A joy in many ways," he answered. "In some, a sorrow."
"In what ways?" she asked quickly, her eyes widening.
"In this way, most of all," he told her, as he took her left hand up, and pointed at the finger where Waldron's ring had been and now no longer was.
She looked at him a moment, hardly understanding; then bowed her head.
"Father," she whispered. "Forgive me—but I couldn't! I—I couldn't! No, not for the world!"
Flint's drug-contracted eyes hardened as he stood there gazing down at her. Once, twice he essayed to speak, but found no words. At last, however, blinking nervously, he said:
"This, Kate, is what I want to talk with you about, to-night. Will you hear me?"