“Oh, you mean those political charges against his financial methods in Chicago,” interjected Jarkins defiantly at this point. “Merely politics, the work of financial rivals, jealous because of his success.”
“I know, I know,” interrupted Mr. Johnson, still depressively. “Financial men everywhere naturally understand and discount that sort of opposition. At the same time, he would meet with opposition here. For this is a very conservative and tight little island. And we do not like outsiders to come in and manage our affairs for us. However, as you say, Mr. Cowperwood is plainly a very able and resourceful man. Whether there are people here who might care to join with him, I cannot say. Certainly I know that there are few, if any, who would be willing to grant him the sole financial control of such a system as you speak of,” and here he got up and brushed from his trousers and waistcoat some flecks of imaginary dust. “He has, you say, rejected the Greaves and Henshaw offer?” he added.
“He has,” echoed both Jarkins and Kloorfain.
“But what were their exact terms?”
Jarkins explained.
“I see, I see. So they wished to retain their contract and 50 per cent. Well, until I have had time to think about this and consult with one or two of my associates, I shall be unable to offer an opinion one way or the other. However,” he added, “it may be worth while for some of the leading investors to talk with him when he gets here.”
Actually, by now, Johnson was of the opinion that Cowperwood was sending these two men about to spy out the situation. In addition, however, he was doubtful as to whether Cowperwood, being an American, and however great his wealth, would ever be able to wrest from the present management even so much as a 50 per cent division. It would be extremely difficult for him to enter this field. At the same time, considering his own and Stane’s investments, and the Charing Cross still likely to be thrown back on Traffic Electrical, and so bring about the loss of more money for its investors, well . . .
He addressed the two men now in a tone of finality.
“I shall have to think the matter over, gentlemen. Call me again, say next Tuesday or Wednesday, and I will tell you finally whether I can be of help to you.”
And with that he led the way to the door and pulled a bell in order that an office boy might show his visitors to the street door. After they had gone, he walked to one of the windows that looked down into the ancient court, where the April sun was still brightly shining. He had a habit, when thinking, of placing his tongue in his cheek and clasping his hands in a prayerful position, fingers down. In this instance he stood so for some time, staring out the window.
And outside in Storey Street, Kloorfain and Jarkins were saying, one to the other: “Excellent! Very shrewd fellow, that . . . but really interested . . . it’s a way out for them, if only they have the sense to see it . . .”
“But that Chicago business! I knew it would come up!” exclaimed Jarkins. “It always does: that prison record of his, or his interest in women . . . as though that made any difference in this case.”
“Stupid! Unbelievably stupid!” echoed Kloorfain.
“Just the same, something will have to be done about it. We’ll have to fix the press some way,” said Jarkins.
“Let me tell you one thing,” concluded Kloorfain. “If any of these wealthy people over here should go into this with Cowperwood, they’d soon close down on all unfavorable publicity. Our laws are different from yours, you know. Here, the truer the scandal, the more libelous it is. And it becomes very dangerous to say anything unless the biggest people want it said. In your country, apparently, it’s just the other way. But I know most of the financial editors on the papers here, and if it should become necessary to hush things up, I think it could be arranged.”
Chapter 20
The sum total of what Jarkins and Kloorfain achieved in their approach to Johnson was well set forth in a conversation which took place that same afternoon between Johnson and Lord Stane in Stane’s office on the ground floor of the Storey Street building.
It should be said, in this connection, that it was Johnson’s commercial honesty and his utterly practical ideas that caused Stane to prize him. For Johnson, as Stane always told himself, was the embodiment of a self-conscious religious and moral rectitude which would not allow him to err too far on the side of cunning and sheer legal trickery, however much he might be tempted to gain success for himself. A stickler for the law, he could still search for all the loopholes with the intention of using them, either to his own advantage or the discomfiture of his adversaries. “His honor compels him to keep books, but it allows him to send out large due bills,” someone had once said of him. And Stane accepted that as a fair picture. At the same time, he liked him for his very eccentricities and quite frequently laughed over his seemingly honest interest in the International Epworth League, its Sunday-school conventions, and his rigid adherence to a total abstinence from liquor in any form. In money matters, he was not petty. He gave quite liberally for the size of his income to churches, Sunday schools, hospitals, and a Southwark institute for the blind, of which he was one of the board of managers and also its unpaid counsel.
For Stane personally, and for a very modest charge, Johnson looked after his investments, insurance rates, and whatsoever legal problems might beset him. They also discussed together politics and the world’s international problems, and usually, as Stane noted, Johnson remained quite close to reality in all matters. Of art, architecture, poetry, letters, women, and the non-acquisitive and purely social pleasures, however, he knew nothing. He once confessed to Stane years before, when both were much younger, that he had no head for such things. “I was brought up under circumstances which did not permit my knowing anything about them,” he said. “It pleases me, of course, to see my boys at Eton and my girl at Bedford, and personally I would not deny them any social tastes they may develop. But as for myself, well, I am a solicitor, and very glad to be as well placed as I am.”
Young Stane had smiled, for he liked the rugged realism of this statement. At the same time, he was content that they should travel different social levels, with only now and then an invitation on the part of Stane to Johnson to visit his family estate in Tregasal or his handsome old house in Berkeley Square, but nearly always on business.
On this particular occasion Johnson found Stane reclining in a round-armed, high-backed, comfortable Chippendale chair, his long legs stretched out and his feet on the heavy mahogany desk before him. He was wearing well-cut tweeds, sand-colored, a light coffee-colored shirt and a dark orange tie, and from time to time he nonchalantly flicked the ashes from a cigarette he was smoking. He was studying a De Beers South African Diamond Mine report, in which company he was personally interested. Some twenty shares he held, as he reflected, were yielding him approximately two hundred pounds annually. He had a long, sallow face, with a large and slightly beaked nose, low forehead, sharp dark eyes, and a large and decidedly genial mouth and slightly defiant chin.
“So there you are!” he called out as Johnson entered after knocking at the door. “Well, what’s up with you now, you honest old Methodist. I read something, this morning, about that address of yours, in Stickney, I believe.”