Futrelle leaned in and whispered to May, “I need to talk to Guggenheim, and he’s ducking out for a smoke or something.”
She gave him a mischievous smile. “Shall I pay my compliments to Madame Aubert?”
“That would be awfully gracious of you, dear…. Let’s both see what we can find out.”
EIGHT
Futrelle caught up with Guggenheim stepping onto the elevator, behind the Grand Staircase; the uniformed attendant waited as the mystery writer stepped aboard.
Guggenheim smiled at him, nodding, saying in a fluid baritone, “The boys play well enough, but I felt the call of a cigar.”
“I heard a similar siren song for a cigarette,” Futrelle said. “Mind if I tag after?”
“I’d enjoy the companionship.” To the elevator attendant, Guggenheim said, “A deck, if you please…. You’re Futrelle, aren’t you, the detective-story writer? Jacques Futrelle?”
It was then that Futrelle realized Guggenheim was mildly intoxicated-not falling-down drunk by any means, but the man had clearly not stinted on the wine during dinner, or perhaps an after-dinner brandy (or three) had done it.
“That’s right. But I prefer Jack.”
“Pleasure, Jack.” The millionaire offered his hand, which bore several jeweled rings, a diamond here, a ruby there. “Ben Guggenheim.”
They shook, and Futrelle said, “Is this elevator one of yours?”
Guggenheim, pleasantly surprised by Futrelle’s question, said, “Why, no-I do business with White Star, but thus far they’ve not done business with me.”
Futrelle had read a newspaper article about Guggenheim’s new company, International Steampump, building the elevators at the Eiffel Tower.
“Sporting of you to give them your business, then,” Futrelle said.
Guggenheim chuckled. “No choice-all the Cunard liners out of Paris were delayed because of the damned stokers’ strike.”
Soon they were poised at the rail of the open portion of the promenade, Guggenheim indulging himself with a Havana, Futrelle lighting up a Fatima. Stars seemed to have been flung like diamonds against the black velvet of the sky; brilliant as they were, the stars cast no reflection on the obsidian waters, far below. The cold was bracing and a pleasant contrast to the intake of tobacco smoke.
“Were you in Paris on business, Mr. Guggenheim?”
“It’s ‘Ben.’” The millionaire’s handsome features had a softness to them, an almost baby-faced quality, his mouth as sensual as a woman’s. “No, my business has its headquarters in Paris, and I have an apartment there…. Do you have children, Jack?”
They were alone on the deck, with only the night and the breeze to keep them company; even the deck chairs were folded up and neatly stacked against the wall.
“I do,” Futrelle said. “A son and a daughter, both in their teens.”
“I’m on my way home for my daughter Hazel’s ninth birthday.”
“There’s a coincidence,” Futrelle said. “I just had a birthday, and celebrating it without having my children around made me so homesick we hopped this boat.”
Guggenheim blew a blue cloud of cigar smoke into the breeze for it to carry out to sea. “I really love my three little girls.”
“It must be difficult, business keeping you away from your family so much.”
“I miss my children; my wife and I…” He turned to look at Futrelle and his eyes were half-lidded; he was tipsy, all right. “As you may be aware… Jack? Jack. As you may be aware, since gossip seems to run rampant on this floating Vanity Fair, the attractive young woman with whom I’m traveling is not my wife.”
“Madame Aubert is quite beautiful.”
He sent another wreath of blue smoke out to sea. “I know I have a reputation as a playboy, and it doesn’t bother me. It bothers my brothers-all except William-but I’m not in the family business anymore, not directly. Do you know that my brothers made an outcast of William because he married a gentile?”
“I wasn’t aware of that.” Futrelle wondered if Guggenheim had made the assumption he was Jewish because he and May regularly sat with the Harrises and Strauses in the Dining Saloon.
Guggenheim was saying, “My wife wanted to divorce me last year and they talked her out of it, my brothers. Said it would be bad for the family name. Family business.”
“Ben, were you by any chance approached by this blackmailer-this fellow Crafton?”
Guggenheim looked at Futrelle as if for the first time; perhaps the millionaire realized he’d been rambling, somewhat drunkenly, and wondered if he’d said too much.
“I only bring this up,” Futrelle said, “because he attempted to extort money out of me.”
Guggenheim’s oval face had turned blank, and still had a puttylike softness; but the eyes were hardening, if still half-lidded. So talkative before, Guggenheim now fell mute.
So, briefly but frankly, Futrelle told Guggenheim what John Crafton had threatened to reveal, and that he had refused to pay.
“I also refused to pay the bastard,” Guggenheim said, won back over to Futrelle by his candor. Then he laughed. “For a blackmailer, he wasn’t very well informed.”
“How so?”
“First, he threatened to go to my family with my ‘philandering.’ To my brothers! Who know I’ve been friendly with ladies of ill repute since my days in the Rocky Mountains. And to my wife! As if she weren’t already well aware of my proclivities…. She has her gossip and tea and bridge and stocks and bonds, and I have my redheads, brunettes and blondes. Jack, do you know why you should never make love to a woman before breakfast?”
“Can’t say I do, Ben.”
“First, it’s tiring. Second, over the course of the day, you may meet somebody you like better.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Ben.”
He shrugged. “Even my children know of Daddy’s lady friends-I’m sure they all remember the live-in nurse we had around the house for several years. I’ve always been honest about my dishonesty, Jack.”
“Not every man can say that.”
“How well I know.”
“Tell me, Ben-how did Crafton take your rejection of his ‘services’?”
Guggenheim snorted a laugh. “He threatened to reveal my ‘secret’ to the newspapers. I told him to go ahead-the respectable publications won’t touch it, and the yellow press doesn’t matter.”
To a man of Guggenheim’s stature, a minor impropriety like a mistress could be common knowledge as long as he himself did not publicly confirm it. Sexual hypocrisy was a privilege of wealth, and even John Astor and his child bride would eventually be accepted by the nobs.
“Have you talked to Crafton since, Ben? Seen him around the ship?”
“No.” He exhaled more smoke into the night. “Not that I was looking for him. There was a time…”
“Yes?”
“A time I might have shot him.”
“Really?”
A faint smile touched the sensual lips. “Happiest time, best days of my life.”
“When was that?”
“Leadville, Colorado,” he said fondly. “Ten acres of land, three shafts and one hundred men… Sitting with a revolver strapped to my belt, by the shack near number-three mine. Keeping track of income and expenses, making out the payroll myself. Going down to Tiger Alley in the Row, dancing with the fancy girls for fifty cents a dance, three-card monte with the mule skinners and miners at Crazy Jim’s… corn whiskey at the Comique Saloon-twenty cents a glass. You know, I’ve made love to some of the most beautiful women in Manhattan, the loveliest ladies in Europe… and I’d give it all up for one night with any one of those saucy belles at Peppersauce Bottoms.”
Then Guggenheim sighed, pitched his cigar over the side, and said, “Shall we go back down to civilization, Jack?”
“If we must,” Futrelle said, tossing his spent Fatima overboard.
When they returned to the concert (the little orchestra was playing the whimsical idyll “Glow-Worm” from Lysistrata) they found May sitting with Madame Aubert; so was Maggie Brown, in the shade of a wide-brimmed hat covered with pleated pink silk, her bosomy body bedecked in a pink silk gown with a silk posy at the white lace bodice.