The blonde, aqua-eyed chauffeur had stowed the bags away. “Ready, sir,” he said.
“We’ll talk about that later then,” Means said. His eyes twinkled. “I can see that Jeffrey is itching to take issue with me. Let’s get in the car. After you, Jeffrey. We’ll go out to my place here and pick up my secretary. I keep a small place here at Dos Almas. Sometimes I have to get away from people. My real home outside San Ramon has become a sort of office, I guess.”
The car purred along smoothly. Means’ place was not far from the airstrip. They turned in the curving drive and parked under a porte-cochere. They went in. The adobe house was furnished in Spanish motif. A tall girl of the same coloring as the chauffeur stood by the huge stone fireplace.
Means said, “This is Laura, my good right arm. Laura, meet the team of Ray-den and O’Reilly. They’ve come to dissect me with a dull scalpel.”
Jeff blushed. “But we aren’t planningБ"
Means put his arm around Jeff’s shoulders and gave him an affectionate pat. It had an odd effect. Jeff hated to be touched. But this seemed different. This gesture seemed to spring from a vast warmth, and it made him think of his father, dead now for ten, nearly eleven years. The gesture and the memory made the corners of Jeff’s eyes sting, and made him turn almost rudely away from Borden Means.
“Nice layout here, Mr. Means,” Jeff said harshly, conscious of Julie’s angry glance in his direction. “Very plush. The oilfields did right by you, eh?”
Means gave him a peculiarly boyish smile. “Now I should say something about luck, I suppose. Luck had nothing to do with it. I just spent thirty-three years being quicker and shrewder and smarter than my fellow men. I guess you know enough about the norm to realize that mine isn’t too much of a feat.”
Laura said, “Mr. Means, if I could have a minute.”
“Surely, my dear,” he said. “Excuse us for a moment.” He went out with the girl.
Jeff winked at Julie. “Now I’d call that secretary a dish. Isn’t it funny the way all these bachelor millionaires seem to grab off secretaries that are a shade on the exotic side.”
“Your dirty mind is showing, darling,” Julie said acidly.
“So you’ve fallen under his spell! Fancy that!”
“Please,” she said. She walked away from him.
“Maybe you can get to be his personal photographer, honey.”
She turned and her eyes blazed. “Will you shut up?”
Means came back with Laura. “We’re ready to go, children.” Laura sat in the front seat with the chauffeur. Means sat in back between Jeff and Julie.
“I can make with the questions now?” Jeff asked as soon as the car had nosed through the village street and begun to pick up speed on the two-lane highway.
“Of course,” Borden Means said.
Jeff leaned forward and worked the crank which glassed off the chauffeur’s compartment.
Jeff took out his notebook. “Mr. Means, you’ve never stated your purpose. Your talks are making quite a dent in America. You have a following. Some say you’re after political office. Others say you’re merely in love with the sound of your own voice. I’m being blunt to save time. Just what are you after?”
“A better world, Jeff.” And his words seemed to make it almost attainable.
“Oh, come off it!” Jeff said crossly. “Thousands of messiahs have gone around bleating about that. It’s a nice goal. But I wouldn’t call it very specific. What do you want — as an individual?”
“To live in a better world. And that’s the same thing both of you want, I’m sure. Now I’ll be a bit personal. In a better world maybe you two would not have lost each other. You had a relationship that was good. Now where is it?”
Jeff looked across him at Julie. She sat with a forgotten camera in her hands, her eyes far away. Tear paths glittered on her cheeks.
“We could have used a better world, Mr. Means,” she said. Her voice shook.
“All right then,” Jeff said harshly. “Let’s talk about methods.”
“I talk to people,” Means said calmly. “That’s rather simple, isn’t it? I talk to them about the things every man wants. We’ve lost sight of our objective. I help people regain their faith in this world and in a good future for mankind. When enough of them realize, through me, that a better world is attainable, then they will band together to make that world possible.”
“You’ve swayed a lot of people, Mr. Means. Do you have any idea of the enormous power that gives you?”
“I have a very excellent understanding of that power, Jeff. And I intend to use it.”
Jeff hunched forward in his seat, turning more directly toward Means. “Now we’re getting somewhere! How are you going to use it?”
“To create a better world for man to live in,” Means said softly.
Jeff threw himself back in the seat. “The same old merry-go-round,” he said bitterly. “You keep that guard too high.”
Means stared directly into Jeff’s face. His whole appearance changed. There was a look of almost unearthly power and purpose about him. “Has your mind grown so thin and small, Jeffrey Rayden, that you cannot comprehend a just motive? Must you forever search for the tarnish on the reverse face of truth, find foolishness and guilt in a dream of a better world? Must you complicate simplicity?”
The heavy voice was like the toll of a distant bell. The hair at the back of Jeff’s neck prickled and his breath came short.
“It... sounds too good to be true,” he said weakly.
The miles spun by in silence. Borden Means was himself again. He talked to them each in turn about their work. He displayed an amazingly exact memory, quoting verbatim from articles as much as a year old.
They entered the outskirts of the boom city of San Ramon at ten minutes after seven, rather than at the hour of four o’clock when the plane would have dropped them there. Off to the right was the vast new San Ramon amphitheatre, an open air structure of great size and seating capacity. Already the big parking lots were almost filled and loaded buses were discharging passengers near the gates.
“They’re coming early to hear you,” Jeff said. “It doesn’t start until eight thirty, does it?”
“The ones who come later than this will have to stand,” Means said. There was no glimmer of pride in his tone. It was just a statement of fact.
He rolled the window down and spoke to Laura. She turned and handed back two tickets. “These are for you,” Means said. “In the only reserved section. I guess it will be best to drop you at your hotel. The Blue Bonnet House, please, Paul. They’re holding your rooms. You can take a taxi out from there.”
“Now wait a minute!” Jeff said, his mind spinning. “How would you know we had reservations? And how would you know the hotel?”
“Laura checked for me and told them you’d register later than your wire stated. The Blue Bonnet was the first place she tried. It’s the newest and the best.”
The cab deposited them at the main gate of the amphitheatre at eight-twenty-five. An unbelievable number of thousands stood outside, unable to see the stage, waiting for the voice of Borden Means to ring out from the amplifiers. As they went down the aisle the size of the seated multitude stunned and bewildered Jeff. Television technicians readied their cameras. The stage, under its arch, was brightly lighted.
It was only seconds after they were seated that Jeff realized miserably that he and Julie were quarreling again.
“But, Jeff,” she said, “couldn’t you even feel his sincerity?”
“Forceful, yes. Sincere? I can’t say. Neither can you. Look at the surface of it. A crackpot oil millionaire with a messiah complex. How can you or I tell whether he believes what he says?”