Robert Kimberly Part 16

"Whatever we do," returned Alice, "don't let us trade on it. I shrink from the very thought of being a gainer by his or any other friends.h.i.+p.

If we are to be friends, do let us be so through mutual likes and interests. Mr. Kimberly would know instantly if we designed it in any other way, I am sure. I never saw such penetrating eyes. Really, he takes thoughts right out of my head."

MacBirney laughed in a hard way. "He might take them out of a woman's head. I don't think he would take many out of a man's."

"He wouldn't need to, dear. A man's thought's, you know, are clearly written on the end of his nose. I wish I knew what to wear to Mr.

Kimberly's dinner."

CHAPTER X

One morning shortly after the MacBirneys had been entertained at The Towers John Kimberly was wheeled into his library where Charles and Robert were waiting for him. Charles leaned against the mantel and his brother stood at a window looking across the lake toward Cedar Point.

As Francis left the room Uncle John's eyes followed him. Presently they wandered back with cheerful suspicion toward his nephews, and he laid his good arm on the table as they took chairs near him.

"Well?" he said lifting his eyebrows and looking blandly from one to the other.

"Well?" echoed Charles good-naturedly, looking from Uncle John to Robert.

"Well?" repeated Robert with mildly a.s.sumed idiocy, looking from Charles back again to Uncle John.

But Uncle John was not to be committed by any resort to his own tactics, and he came back at Charles on the flank. "Get any fish?" he asked, as if a.s.sured that Charles would make an effort to deceive him in answering.

"We sat around for a while without doing a thing, Uncle John. Then they began to strike and I had eight days of the best sport I ever saw on the river,"

Uncle John buried his disappointment under a smile. "Good fis.h.i.+ng, eh?"

"Excellent."

There was evidently no opening on this subject, and Uncle John tried another tender spot. "Yacht go any better?"

"McAdams has done wonders with it, Uncle John. She never steamed so well since she was launched."

"Cost a pretty penny, eh, Charlie?"

"That is what pretty pennies are for, isn't it?"

Unable to disturb his nephew's peace of mind, Uncle John launched straight into business. "What are you going to do with those fellows?"

"You mean the MacBirney syndicate? Robert tells me he has concluded to be liberal with them."

"He is giving too much, Charlie."

"He knows better what the stuff is worth than we do."

Uncle John smiled sceptically. "He will give them more than they are worth, I am afraid."

Robert said nothing.

"Perhaps there is a reason for that," suggested Charles.

They waited for Robert to speak. He s.h.i.+fted in his chair presently and spoke with some decision. His intonation might have been unpleasant but that the depth and fulness of his voice redeemed it. The best note in his utterance was its open frankness.

"Uncle John understands this matter just as well as I do," he began, somewhat in protest.

"We have been over the ground often. These people have been an annoyance to us; this is undeniable. McCrea has complained of them for two years. Through a s.h.i.+ft in the cards--this money squeeze--we have them to-day in our hands----"

Uncle John's eyes shone and he clasped the fingers of one hand tightly in the other. "That is what I say; trim them!" he whispered eagerly.

Robert went on, unmoved: "Let us look at that, too. He wants me to trim them. I have steadily opposed buying them at all. But the rest of you have overruled me. Very good. They know now that they are in our power. They are, one and all, bushwhackers and guerillas. To my mind there isn't a trustworthy man in the crowd--not even MacBirney.

"They have made selling agreements with McCrea again and again and left him to hold the sack. We can't do business in that way. When we give our word it must be good. They give their word to break it. Whenever we make a selling agreement with such people we get beaten, invariably.

They have cut into us on the Missouri River, at St. Paul, even at Chicago--from their Kansas plants. They make poor sugar, but it sells, and even when it won't sell, it demoralizes the trade. Now they are on their knees. They want us to buy to save what they've got invested. At a receiver's sale they would get nothing. But on the other hand Lambert might get the plants. If we tried to bid them in there would be a howl from the Legislature, perhaps."

Uncle John was growing moody, for the prey was slipping through his fingers. "It might be better to stand pat," he muttered.

Robert paid no attention. "What I propose, and G.o.d knows I have explained it before, is this: These people can be trimmed, or they can be satisfied. I say give them eleven millions--six millions cash--three millions preferred and two millions in our common for fifty per cent of their stock instead of sixteen millions for all of their stock."

Uncle John looked horror stricken. "It is nothing to us," exclaimed Robert, impatiently. "I can make the whole capital back in twelve months with McCrea to help MacBirney reorganize and run the plants. It is a fortune for them, and we keep MacBirney and the rest of them, for ten years at least, from scheming to start new plants. Nelson says there are legal difficulties about buying more than half their stock. But the voting control of all of it can be safely trusteed."

Uncle John could barely articulate: "Too much, it is too much."

"Bosh. This is a case where generosity is 'plainly indicated,' as Hamilton says."

"Too much."

"Robert is right," a.s.serted Charles curtly.

Uncle John threw his hand up as if to say: "If you are resolved to ruin us, go on!"

"You will be surprised at the success of it," concluded Robert.

"MacBirney wants to come here to live, though Chicago would be the better place for him. Let him be responsible for the Western territory.

With such an arrangement we ought to have peace out there for ten years.

If we can, it means just one hundred millions more in our pockets than we can make in the face of this continual price cutting."

Charles rose. "Then it is settled."

Uncle John ventured a last appeal. "Make the cash five and a half millions."

"Very good," a.s.sented Robert, who to meet precisely this objection had raised the figure well above what he intended to pay. "As you like, Uncle John," he said graciously. "Charles, make the cash five and a half millions."

And Uncle John went back to his loneliness, treasuring in his heart the half million he had saved, and encouraged by his frail triumph in the conference over his never-quite-wholly-understood nephew.

At a luncheon next day, the decision was laid by Charles and Robert before the Kimberly partners, by whom it was discussed and approved.

In the evening Charles, with Robert listening, laid the proposal before MacBirney, who had been sent for and whose astonishment at the unexpected liberality overwhelmed him.

He was promptly whirled away from The Towers in a De Castro car. And from a simple after-dinner conference, in which he had sat down at ten o'clock a promoter, he had risen at midnight with his brain reeling, a millionaire.