Mr. Sam Gwent stood in what was known as the "floral hall" of the Plaza Hotel, so called because it was built in colonnades which opened into various vistas of flowers and clambering vines growing with all the luxuriance common to California. He had just arrived, and while divesting himself of a light dust overcoat interrogated the official at the enquiry office.
"So he doesn't live here after all,"—he said—"Then where's he to be found?"
"Mr. Seaton has taken the hill hut"—replied the book-keeper—"'The hut of the dying' it is sometimes called. He prefers it to the hotel. The air is better for his lungs."
"Air? Lungs?"—Gwent sniffed contemptuously. "There's very little the matter with his lungs if he's the man I know! Where's this hut of the dying? Can I get there straight?"
The bookkeeper touched a bell, and Manella appeared. Gwent stared openly. Here—if "prize beauties" were anything—was a real winner!
"This gentleman wants Mr. Seaton"—said the bookkeeper—"Just show him the way up the hill."
"Sorry to trouble you!" said Gwent, raising his hat with a courtesy not common to his manner.
"Oh, it is no trouble!" and Manella smiled at him in the most ravishing way—"The path is quite easy to follow."
She preceded him out of the "floral hall," and across the great gardens, now in their most brilliant bloom to a gate which she opened, pointing with one hand towards the hill where the flat outline of the "hut of the dying" could be seen clear against the sky.
"There it is"—she explained—"It's nothing of a climb, even on the warmest day. And the air is quite different up there to what it is down here."
"Better, I suppose?"
"Oh, yes! Much better!"
"And is that why Mr. Seaton lives in the hut? On account of the air?"
Manella waved her hands expressively with a charming Spanish gesture of indifference.
"I suppose so! How should I know? He is here for his health."
Sam Gwent uttered a curious inward sound, something between a grunt and a cough.
"Ah! I should like to know how long he's been ill!"
Manella again gave her graceful gesture.
"Surely you DO know if you are a friend of his?" she said.
He looked keenly at her.
"Are YOU a friend of his?"
She smiled—almost laughed.
"I? I am only a help in the Plaza—I take him his food—"
"Take him his food!" Sam Gwent growled out something like an oath—"What! Can't he come and get it for himself? Is he treated like a bear in a cage or a baby in a cradle?"
Manella gazed at him with reproachful soft eyes.
"Oh, you are rough!" she said—"He pays for whatever little trouble he gives. Indeed it is no trouble! He lives very simply—only on new milk and bread. I expect his health will not stand anything else—though truly he does not look ill—"
Gwent cut her description short.
"Well, thank you for showing me the way, Senora or Senorita, whichever you are—I think you must be Spanish—"
"Senorita"—she said, with gentle emphasis—"I am not married. You are right that I am Spanish."
"Such eyes as yours were never born of any blood but Spanish!" said Gwent—"I knew that at once! That you are not married is a bit of luck for some man—the man you WILL marry! For the moment adios! I shall dine at the Plaza this evening, and shall very likely bring my friend with me."
She shook her head smiling.
"You will not!"
"How so?"
"Because he will not come!"
She turned away, back towards the Hotel, and Gwent started to ascend the hill alone.
"Here's a new sort of game!"—he thought—"A game I should never have imagined possible to a man like Roger Seaton! Hiding himself up here in a consumption hut, and getting a beautiful woman to wait on him and 'take him his food'! It beats most things I've heard of! Dollar sensation books aren't in it! I wonder what Morgana Royal would say to it, if she knew! He's given her the slip this time!"
Half-way up the hill he paused to rest, and saw Seaton striding down at a rapid pace to meet him.
"Hullo, Gwent!"
"Hullo!"
The two men shook hands.
"I got your wire at the beginning of the week"—said Gwent—"and came as soon as I could get away. It's been a stiff journey too—but I wouldn't keep you waiting."
"Thanks,—it's as much your affair as mine"—said Seaton—"The thing is ripe for action if you care to act. It's quite in your hands, I hardly thought you'd come—"
"But I sent you a reply wire?"
"Oh, yes—that's all right! But reply wires don't always clinch business. Yours arrived last night."
"I wonder if it was ever delivered!" grumbled Gwent—"It was addressed to the Plaza Hotel—not to a hut on a hill!"
Seaton laughed.
"You've heard all about it I see! But the hut on the hill is a 'dependence' of the Plaza—a sort of annex where dying men are put away to die peaceably—"
"YOU are not a dying man!" said Gwent, very meaningly—"And I can't make out why you pretend to be one!"
Again Seaton laughed.
"I'm not pretending!—my dear Gwent, we're all dying men! One may die a little faster than another, but it's all the same sort of 'rot, and rot, and thereby hangs a tale!' What's the news in Washington?"
They walked up the hill slowly, side by side.
"Not startling"—answered Gwent—then paused—and repeated—"Not startling—there's nothing startling nowadays—though some folks made a very good show of being startled when my nephew Jack shot himself."
Seaton stopped in his walk.
"Shot himself? That lad? Was he insane?"
"Of course!—according to the coroner. Everybody is called 'insane' who gets out of the world when it's too difficult to live in. Some people would call it sane. I call it just—cowardice! Jack had lost his last chance, you see. Morgana Royal threw him over."
Seaton paced along with a velvet-footed stride like a tiger on a trail.
"Had she led him on?"
"Rather! She leads all men 'on'—or they think she does. She led YOU on at one time!"
Seaton turned upon him with a quick, savage movement.
"Never! I saw through her from the first! She could never make a fool of ME!"
Sam Gwent gave a short cough, expressing incredulity.
"Well! Washington thought you were the favoured 'catch' and envied your luck! Certainly she showed a great preference for you—"
"Can't you talk of something else?" interposed Seaton, impatiently.
Gwent gave him an amused side-glance.
"Why, of course I can!" he responded—"But I thought I'd tell you about Jack—"
"I'm sorry!" said Seaton, hastily, conscious that he had been lacking in sympathy—"He was your heir, I believe?"
"Yes,—he might have been, had he kept a bit straighter"—said Gwent—"But heirs are no good anywhere or anyhow. They only spend what they inherit and waste the honest work of a life-time. Is that your prize palace?"
He pointed to the hut which they had almost reached.
"That's it!" answered Seaton—"And I prefer it to any palace ever built. No servants, no furniture, no useless lumber—just a place to live in—enough for any man."
"A tub was enough for Diogenes"—commented Gwent—"If we all lived in his way or your way it would be a poor look-out for trade! However, I presume you'll escape taxation here!"
Seaton made no reply, but led the way into his dwelling, offering his visitor a chair.
"I hope you've had breakfast"—he said—"For I haven't any to give you. You can have a glass of milk if you like?"
Gwent made a wry face.
"I'm not a good subject for primitive nourishment"—he said—"I've been weaned too long for it to agree with me!"
He sat down. His eyes were at once attracted by the bowl of restless fluid on the table.
"What's that?" he asked.
Roger Seaton smiled enigmatically.
"Only a trifle"—he answered—"Just health! It's a sort of talisman;—germ-proof, dust-proof, disease-proof! No microbe of mischief, however infinitesimal, can exist near it, and a few drops, taken into the system, revivify the whole."
"If that's so, your fortune's made"—said Gwent, "Give your discovery, or recipe, or whatever it is, to the world—-"
"To keep the world alive? No, thank you!" And the look of dark scorn on Seaton's face was astonishing in its almost satanic expression—"That is precisely what I wish to avoid! The world is over-ripe and over-rotten,—and it is over-crowded with a festering humanity that is INhuman, and worse than bestial in its furious grappling for self and greed. One remedy for the evil would be that no children should be born in it for the next thirty or forty years—the relief would be incalculable,—a monstrous burden would be lifted, and there would be some chance of betterment,—but as this can never be, other remedies must be sought and found. It's pure hypocrisy to talk of love for children, when every day we read of mothers selling their offspring for so much cash down,—lately in China during a spell of famine parents killed their daughters like young calves, for food. Ugly facts like these have to be looked in the face—it's no use putting them behind one's back, and murmuring beautiful lies about 'mother-love' and such nonsense. As for the old Mosaic commandment 'Honour thy father and mother'—it's ordinary newspaper reading to hear of boys and girls attacking and murdering their parents for the sake of a few dollars."
"You've got the ugly facts by heart"—said Gwent slowly—"But there's another and more cheerful outlook—if you choose to consider it. Newspaper reading always gives the worst and dirtiest side of everything—it wouldn't be newspaper stuff if it was clean. Newspapers remind me of the rotting heaps in gardens—all the rubbish piled together till the smell becomes a nuisance—then a good burning takes place of the whole collection and it makes a sort of fourth-rate manure." He paused a moment—then went on—
"I'm not given to sentiment, but I dare say there are still a few folks who love each other in this world,—and it's good to know of when they do. My sister"—he paused again, as if something stuck in his throat; "My sister loved her boy,—Jack. His death has driven her silly for the time—doctors say she will recover—that it's only 'shock.' 'Shock' is answerable for a good many tragedies since the European war."
Seaton moved impatiently, but said nothing,
"You're a bit on the fidgets"—resumed Gwent, placidly—"You want me to come to business—and I will. May I smoke?"
His companion nodded, and he drew out his cigar-case, selecting from it a particularly fragrant Havana.
"You don't do this sort of thing, or I'd offer you one,"—he said,—"Pity you don't, it soothes the nerves. But I know your 'fads'; you are too closely acquainted with the human organism to either smoke or drink. Well—every man to his own method! Now what you want me to do is this—to represent the force and meaning of a certain substance which you have discovered, to the government of the United States and induce them to purchase it. Is that so?"
"That is so!" and Roger Seaton fixed his eyes on Gwent's hard, lantern-jawed face with a fiery intensity—"Remember, it's not child's play! Whoever takes what I can give, holds the mastery of the world! I offer it to the United States—but I would have preferred to offer it to Great Britain, being as I am, an Englishman. But the dilatory British men of science have snubbed me once—and I do not intend them to have the chance of doing it again. Briefly—I offer the United States the power to end wars, and all thought or possibility of war for ever. No Treaty of Versailles or any other treaty will ever be necessary. The only thing I ask in reward for my discovery is the government pledge to use it. That is, of course, should occasion arise. For my material needs, which are small, an allowance of a sum per annum as long as I live, will satisfy my ambition. The allowance may be as much or as little as is found convenient. The pledge to USE my discovery is the one all-important point—it must be a solemn, binding pledge—never to be broken."
Gwent puffed slowly at his cigar.
"It's a bit puzzling!"—he said—"When and where should it be used?"
Seaton stretched out a hand argumentatively.
"Now listen!" he said—"Suppose two nations quarrel—or rather, their governments and their press force them to quarrel—the United States (possessing my discovery) steps between and says—'Very well! The first move towards war—the first gun fired—means annihilation for one of you or both! We hold the power to do this!'"
Gwent drew his cigar from his lips.
"Annihilation!" he murmured—"Annihilation? For one or both!"
"Just so—absolute annihilation!" and Seaton smiled with a pleasant air of triumph—"A holocaust of microbes! The United States must let the whole world know of their ability to do this (without giving away my discovery). They must say to the nations 'We will have no more wars. If innocent people are to be killed, they can be killed quite as easily in one way as another, and our way will cost nothing—neither ships nor ammunition nor guns.' And, of course, the disputants will be given time to decide their own fate for themselves."
Sam Gwent, holding his cigar between his fingers and looking meditatively at its glowing end, smiled shrewdly.
"All very well!"—he said—"But you forget money interests. Money interests always start a war—it isn't nations that do it, it's 'companies.' Your stuff won't annihilate companies all over the globe. Governments are not likely to damage their own financial moves. Suppose the United States government agreed to your proposition and took the sole possession and proprietorship of your discovery, and gave you their written, signed and sealed pledge to use it, it doesn't at all follow that they would not break that pledge at the first opportunity. In these days governments break promises as easily as eggshells. And there would be ample excuse for breaking the pledge to you—simply on the ground of inhumanity."
"War is inhumanity"—said Seaton—"The use of my discovery would be no worse than war."
"Granted!—but war makes money for certain sections of the community,—you must think of that!" and Gwent's little shrewd eyes gleamed like bits of steel.—"Money!—money! Stores—food, clothing—transport—all these things in war mean fortunes to the contractors—while the wiping out of a nation in YOUR way would mean loss of money. Loss of life wouldn't matter,—it never does really matter—not to governments!—but loss of money—ah, well!—that's a very different and much more serious affair!"
A cynical smile twisted his features as he spoke, and Roger Seaton, standing opposite to him with his fine head well thrown back on his shoulders and his whole face alive with the power of thought, looked rather like a Viking expostulating with some refractory vassal.
"So you think the United States wouldn't take my 'discovery?'" he said—"Or—if they took it—couldn't be trusted to keep a pledged word?"
Gwent shrugged his shoulders.
"Of course our government could be trusted as much as any other government in the world,"—he said—"Perhaps more. But it would exonerate itself for breaking even a pledged word which necessitated an inhuman act involving loss of money! See? War is an inhuman act, but it brings considerable gain to those who engineer it,—this makes all the difference between humanity and INhumanity!"
"Well!—you are a senator, and you ought to know!" replied Seaton—"And if your opinion is against my offer, I will not urge you to make it. But—as I live and stand here talking to you, you may bet every dollar you possess that if neither the United States nor any other government will accept the chance I give it of holding the nations like dogs in leash, I'll hold them myself! I! One single unit of the overteeming millions! Yes, Mr. Senator Gwent, I swear it! I'll be master of the world!"
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