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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/10/2016, SPi

THE L IMITS OF THE M ARKET

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/10/2016, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/10/2016, SPi

PAUL DE GRAUWE

THE LIMITS OF
THE MARKET
The Pendulum between Government
and Market

TRANSLATED BY
ANNA ASBURY

1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/10/2016, SPi

3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Uitgeverij Lannoo nv . For the original edition. Original title: De limieten van de
markt. Translated from the Dutch language. www.lannoo.com.
© Oxford University Press . For the English edition.
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 
Impression: 
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
 Madison Avenue, New York, NY , United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 
ISBN ––––
Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

This book was published with the support of the Flemish

Literature Fund (www.flemishliterature.be).
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/10/2016, SPi

CONTENTS

List of Figures vii

List of Tables ix
List of Boxes xi
Preface xiii

. The Great Economic Pendulum 

. The Limits of Capitalism 

. External Limits of Capitalism 

. Internal Limits of Capitalism 

. The Utopia of Self-Regulation in the Market System 

. Who can Save the Market System from Destruction? 

. External Limits of Governments 

. Internal Limits of Governments 

. Who is in Charge? Market or Government? 

. Rise and Fall of Capitalism: Linear or Cyclical? 

. The Euro is a Threat to the Market System 

. The World of Piketty 

. Pendulum Swings between Markets and Governments 

Notes 
Index 

v
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/10/2016, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/10/2016, SPi

LIST OF FIGURES

.. Per capita GDP in dollars (constant prices) 

.. Global government spending in OECD countries
(in % GDP) 
.. Highest rates of personal income tax 
.. Real GDP per capita in North and South Korea 
.. Rising temperatures and CO emissions: a non-linear
relationship 
.. Government investments in eurozone countries
(in % GDP) 
.. Bread supply and demand: who receives what? 
.. Share of total income received by top % in Western
countries 
.. Annual growth in production per hour in the US (in %) 
.. Growth production per capita since the industrial
revolution (in %) 
.. The Kuznets curve 
.. Trade-off between growth and income equality 
.. Highest personal income tax rates 
.. Average annual growth in per capita GDP (in %) 
.. Spending on social security as % of government spending 
.. Trade-off between efficiency and equality 
.. Relationship between efficiency and equality 
.. Share of total income going to the top % 
.. Average annual growth in per capita GDP (in %) 
.. Cuts in real-terms growth in expenditure on
healthcare (–) 

vii
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/10/2016, SPi

LIST OF FIGURES

.. Market/government hierarchy according to market

fundamentalists 
.. Market/government hierarchy according to government
fundamentalists 
.. Non-hierarchical relationship between government
and market 
.. Gross hourly labour costs in  (euros) 
.. Hourly labour costs and national competitiveness 
.. Employer contributions and monthly labour costs
(industry and services, excluding public services)
in EU () 
.. Employer contributions and monthly labour costs () 
.. Hierarchy of economic activity: business view 
.. Government debt (in % GDP) 
.. Interest rate on Spanish and UK ten-year government
bonds 
.. Cumulative growth in GDP and budgetary austerity
– 
.. Increase in government debt/GDP (in %) and budgetary
austerity (in % GDP) – 
.. Ten-year eurozone government bond spreads 
.. Monetary base and money supply (M) in the eurozone
(December  = ) 
.. National capital in Great Britain and France (in % GDP) 
.. Public and private capital in Great Britain and France
(in % GDP) 
.. Return (after tax) on capital (r) and growth in GDP (g)
in the world 
.. Index of worldwide industrial production during two
recessions 
.. GDP in constant prices (year  = ) 
.. Index of GDP in developed and developing countries 
.. Inequality and instability 

viii
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/10/2016, SPi

LIST OF TABLES

.. Return on capital (r) and growth of GDP (g) in the world 
.. Share of capital belonging to the top % and top %
in Europe and the US 

ix
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/10/2016, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/10/2016, SPi

LIST OF BOXES

.. How Clever Marketing Appeals to System I 

.. Development of World Inequality 
.. Why I Am sometimes Exasperated by Eurostar 
.. A Hierarchy of Economic Values? 
.. Lender of Last Resort and Inflation 

xi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/10/2016, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/10/2016, SPi

PREFACE

ntil the s intense debates raged in universities as to whether

U the economy needed managing by market mechanisms or gov-
ernment planning, a question of market vs state, each side with its
own convinced supporters. It had to be one or the other.
We have since learnt a number of lessons. Firstly, a centrally
planned economy does not work. Nowhere has such an economy
succeeded in creating sufficient material prosperity for the population.
This is the reason almost all communist regimes collapsed in the
s.
The second insight is that pure market systems do not exist any-
where. All known economic systems are a mixture of market and
government control, and with good reason. A pure market system
does not guarantee material prosperity for large segments of the
population, which become marginalized and are left to their fate.
Pure market systems and purely centrally planned systems are
therefore nowhere to be seen in the real world for the same funda-
mental reason. Neither succeeds in creating material prosperity for a
large proportion of the population (in the case of a market economy)
or even for the population as a whole (in the case of a centrally
planned economy). Nor will people accept either system, unless they
are maintained by a dictatorship, as in North Korea, for example. The
age-old discussion of market vs state is therefore outdated. It cannot
be one or the other. A mixture will always be required.
The only relevant question, then, is how precisely that mixture
should look. How far should we let the market go in order to create
as much prosperity as possible? What is the responsibility of the

xiii
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/10/2016, SPi

PREFACE

government in generating wealth? Who should do what to advance

prosperity for all? These are awkward questions, but they are the only
interesting ones, which is why we seek to tackle them in this book.
By formulating the problem in this way, we can circumvent many
of the ideological positions on the subject. Markets are not inherently
better or worse than governments. The only thing that counts is
people’s prosperity. Market and government are instruments for
achieving that goal. There is therefore no point in being an advocate
of the market in an absolute sense, any more than it makes sense to
trust governments more than markets. Both are needed to promote
prosperity.
That coveted mixture of market and state, however, is anything but
easy to achieve. It is an arduous, sometimes destructive process, which
is constantly in motion. There have been periods in history in which
the market has gained increasing importance, recent decades being a
good example. In other periods things moved in the opposite direc-
tion and governments gained in dominance. The turning points in
these pendulum swings have coincided with disruptive events which
test the boundaries of market and state. It is as if humanity in its search
for the correct balance continually swings from one extreme to the
other. The reason behind this dynamic is an important theme of
this book.
We will also investigate the question of the dangers of these great
historic shifts. Will the current movement, with the market gaining a
greater role due to globalization, not bring it up against its limits? Or
do the financial crisis and growing inequality of income and wealth
show that we are already reaching those limits? What will happen
then? Should we brace ourselves for the overthrow of the capitalist
system? Will we return to an economy in which the government is in
charge? Will this promote prosperity? These are among the many
important questions I hope to answer in this book. They are also very
topical questions, as witnessed for instance by the fierce discussions
on increasing inequality of income and whether or not to introduce a
tax on wealth.

xiv
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/10/2016, SPi

PREFACE

This book also reflects my search for the truth. There have been
moments in my life when I firmly believed that the market could offer
a solution to most economic problems and that governments should
play a minimal role. I have since withdrawn from that position.
I believe I am now less ideologically driven and tend to think more
pragmatically about the role which market and government should
fulfil. Pragmatism also better enables us to think objectively about the
ever-changing role which market and government play in society.
Without Lieven Sercu and Maarten Van Steenbergen, director and
publisher at Lannoo, this book would never have come into being.
They began to torment me several years ago with requests for a book
on the subject. I did not feel inclined to write one, so I kept them
waiting, but they persisted until I gave in and started working. The
more I wrote the more enthusiastic I became. It was a thoroughly
enriching personal experience, because it compelled me to order my
ideas and look for new ones. Kris van Hamme, editor at Lannoo, read
the first versions of this book with great patience. His critical mind
has helped me to rectify errors and inaccuracies to make this book
more readable.
This book is a translation from the Dutch (De Limieten van de Markt).
A new chapter was added (Chapter ) in which I discuss what econo-
mists and philosophers wrote about the relationship between market
and state. I am very grateful to Anna Asbury for an excellent transla-
tion and to Howard Emmens for editing this book.
As well as footnotes (denoted by a symbol) the book includes
numbered endnotes which are to be found at the end of the book.

xv
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/10/2016, SPi
 CHAPTER 1

THE GREAT ECONOMIC

PENDULUM

T he economic history of the last two hundred years is one of

cyclical movements, movements which increased the influence
of the markets at the expense of governments, then returned the upper
hand to governments at the expense of the markets.
The nineteenth century saw a protracted expansion of the capitalist
system. Imitating Great Britain, which fired the starting shot for the
process of liberalization in the eighteenth century, more and more
countries on the continent of Europe dismantled internal restrictions
inhibiting the free initiative of entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs
took advantage of the move to develop a multitude of new activities.
External impediments to the free movement of goods and services
were also cut back, enabling countries to specialize. International
trade flourished.
The triumph of the market system was visible everywhere. Produc-
tion of goods and services increased spectacularly in the countries
which had deregulated their economic system. Material prosperity, as
measured by per capita gross domestic product (per capita GDP),
began to increase in Western Europe and America. That growth was
made possible by entrepreneurs and capitalists tirelessly searching for
new products and production methods. Competition between entre-
preneurs led to an extraordinary dynamic of technological progress.
The railways, electricity, telegraphy, and many other technological
innovations drove material progress. This meant a doubling in pros-
perity in these two parts of the world by the end of the nineteenth
century compared with . For the first time in history the shackles


 THE L IMI TS OF TH E MAR KET

6000

5000

4000

3000

2000

1000

1500 1550 1600 1650 1700 1750 1800 1850 1900

Great Britain France Germany Italy

Spain Japan India China

Figure .. Per capita GDP in dollars (constant prices)

Source: Angus Maddison, Contours of the World Economy, 1–2030 AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 382, Table A.7

of economic stagnation were thrown off (see Figure .). There

appeared to be no limits to the domain of the markets.

The First Half of the Twentieth Century:

Decline of the Market

Those limits, however, were to become clear in the twentieth century.

After the temporary interruption to growth in prosperity during
World War I (along with the inexpressible suffering of millions), in
the s the unbridled expansion of capitalism appeared set to
continue. However, that was not the case. In the s the Great
Depression set in. In many countries prosperity dropped dramatically,
while unemployment rose to unprecedented levels. Millions of people
in the most prosperous countries of Western Europe and America had


 T HE GREAT ECONOM IC P ENDULUM

suddenly lost their way and were plunged into the depths of misery.
This immediately created a breeding ground for political extremism
and violence, causing the collapse of democratic systems. It would
eventually lead to the most horrifying war in history.
The triumphal procession of the market system came to an abrupt
halt. In many countries people blamed the economic misery on the
unbridled expansion of capitalism. Countries such as the Soviet Union
had already turned their backs on the market system at the start of the
s and founded economies centrally led by government. They
became the new trendsetters. In many countries the domain of the
markets shrank and governments resolutely took over economic
leadership. In the United States President Franklin Roosevelt launched
his ‘New Deal’, a government programme aimed at rescuing the
economy through large-scale government investments. In Germany
the Nazi government did the same when it came to power in ,
with great success in fact. In many countries the government became
the institution which took over the decisions about investments from
the markets. Key industries were nationalized. Countries closed their
economic borders. It appeared that the market system was on the
retreat and the future belonged to countries with government-
controlled economies.
After World War II growth recovered, mainly due to government-
driven rebuilding of Western economies. Government investment was
the motor of growth. Public investments and construction of social
security systems gave Western European governments a central place
in the new economic model. The perception that the market system
had failed to guarantee a decent existence for all drove governments to
develop social security systems to protect the millions who were
unemployed, sick, or disabled.
The growing significance of governments was also apparent from
the increase in government spending in the post-war period. In
Figure . we see the development of post-war government spending
(up to ) in the countries that are members of the Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). These are the


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 THE L IMI TS OF TH E MAR KET

40

30

20

10

0
1950 1960 1968 1974 1980 1985 1990

Figure .. Global government spending in OECD countries (in % GDP)

most industrialized countries, largely in Europe and America. As

shown, in the period between  and  government spending
as a proportion of GDP in OECD countries almost doubled. This trend
stopped after the mid-s.
Taxes on the highest incomes also rose substantially, as shown in
Figure .. In countries such as the UK and US the income of top
earners was almost completely siphoned off, with tax rates of ninety
per cent or more on the highest incomes, reflecting a widespread view
that the rich do not really contribute to economic prosperity. This
flew in the face of the fundamentals of market thinking, namely that
successful people contribute a great deal to material prosperity.
According to this view (the ‘trickle-down theory’) the poor in a
country benefit from the initiatives of the few who amass large
fortunes. The rich should be pampered and protected, to everyone’s
benefit. This theory was thrown out after the Great Depression.
For many people in the post-war period the rise of governments as
the controllers of economies seemed an inevitable and permanent


 T HE GREAT ECONOM IC P ENDULUM
MARGINAL TAX RATES IN HIGHEST INCOME BRACKETS
%

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
1909
1903

1930

1945
1948

1963

1972
1918

1936

1942

1951
1954

1960

1978
1966
1912

1927

1933

1939

1957

1975
1900

1915

1924

1969
1906

1921

US UK Germany France

Figure .. Highest rates of personal income tax

Source: Piketty, <http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/en/capital21c2>

fact. Many people saw the superiority of centrally planned economies

as self-evident. In the famous  Kitchen Debate between Richard
Nixon, then vice president of the United States, and Nikita Khrushchev,
then leader of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev declared with great
conviction that the Soviet Union would catch up with the US before
the end of the century. Many people were indeed convinced that this
would happen. The famous American economist Paul Samuelson who
received the Nobel Prize in  was also the author of the most popular
and influential economics textbook. The  edition included an
extrapolation of GDP per capita in the US and in the Soviet Union
showing that by  the Soviet Union would have caught up and
surpassed the US. In later editions this catch-up moment was pushed
further into the future, until the  edition dropped this extrapolation
altogether. Six years later the Soviet Union collapsed.


 THE L IMI TS OF TH E MAR KET

The s: The Return of the Market System

Once again, history was to take a different turn. From the s it
became increasingly clear that government-controlled economies
were reaching their limits. Countries which had gone the furthest in
government control were experiencing the greatest difficulties in
achieving economic progress. They suffered from a lack of techno-
logical innovation. Nationalized companies and sectors suffered great
losses, which had to be made up through taxes. Economies in the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe stagnated and there were serious
shortages of essential goods and services. For all those with their eyes
open, it was clear that government-managed economies failed to
create material prosperity.
The cause of this failure is now clear to everyone (although this was
not the case in the post-war period). The central planner issues
instructions to countless companies stating what and how much
they should manufacture, whom to buy materials from, what
machines to use, how many workers to employ, what salaries to pay
and prices to charge, where the products should be transported to,
what the retail prices should be, and thousands of other details. An
organizational model of this kind runs into two problems.
The first relates to information. In order to issue all these instruc-
tions, information on all manufacturing options and methods must be
centrally available, along with the preferences of millions of con-
sumers. That is an enormous mountain of data that also changes
constantly. In reality it proved impossible to keep all that information
up to date, process it, and make use of it. The consequence was that
the wrong goods and services were produced and ended up in the
wrong places, leading to large surpluses in some places and shortages
elsewhere. The long queues in front of the shops in Moscow became
the symbol of the great inefficiency of a centrally planned economy.
A second problem is that the centrally planned economic model
provides too little incentive for effort and creativity. People who
receive instructions must follow them to the letter, at the risk of


 T HE GREAT ECONOM IC P ENDULUM

being punished. They do only what is asked of them and nothing

more. The subsequent lack of experimentation with new products or
manufacturing methods results in technological stagnation. Products
and technologies remained unchanged for half a century in Eastern
Europe and the Soviet Union. A particularly spectacular example was
exposed when East Germany opened up, as the Zeiss camera factories
in Jena had not changed any aspect of their products since World
War II. They were still using the same old technology, while the
Japanese had been constantly introducing new cameras with advanced
new technical features into the market at breakneck speed.
The failure of government management of the economy led to a
liberalization movement from America and the United Kingdom
taking much of the world in its grip. Markets all over the world
opened up once again. Governments owning a large part of the
economy privatized public companies. Telecom companies, railways,
car manufacturers, banks, and water companies which had been
nationalized over the last few decades were privatized again.
Countries reopened their borders. World trade was liberalized,
setting the stage for enormous globalization of the economy.
Countries such as China and the Soviet Union threw their principles
of central management overboard and converted to capitalism. They
may have maintained state-owned enterprises, but their share of
national production dropped steadily. Private companies were now
the source of economic dynamism.
Just as in the nineteenth century, this was seen as a triumph for the
market system. Material prosperity in the countries which had liber-
ated their economies underwent incredible growth. This was most
spectacular in the countries of East Asia, which began to grow by ten
per cent per year from the s (Japan), s (Korea), and s
(China). This spectacular growth enabled countries such as Japan and
Korea to approach the prosperity levels of America and Western
Europe. China still has a long way to go, but it is already clear that
the country has succeeded in raising the prosperity of the population
to unprecedented levels (by Chinese standards) at record speed.


 THE L IMI TS OF TH E MAR KET

The Market Reaches Everything

The rise of the market system since the s has not only led to
spectacular growth in material prosperity in countries which until
recently lived in the greatest poverty. That rise also manifested itself
in another way: market mechanisms and principles increasingly crept
into areas of society where they were previously absent.
There are myriad examples of this effect. In more and more countries
education, especially higher education, became subject to market prin-
ciples. Fees for universities in many countries rose steeply. The profes-
sors, who previously enjoyed academic freedom (in many cases
meaning doing what they liked to do without any checks from society),
became subject to the same evaluation criteria as employees in the
private sector. Academics who performed well and published a great
deal came to receive higher rewards than those who failed to do so.
The cultural sector did not escape this trend either. Where in the
past theatres were able to count on government support for a large
proportion of their finances, many had to look elsewhere. Increasingly
directors went in search of financial support from sponsors and
theatregoers instead of the taxpayer.
Within companies, too, a revolution took place. Businesses were in
fact organizations governed by hierarchical structures. The boss gave
orders and the employees followed their instructions. This often led to a
lack of involvement and creativity among employees. Now companies
were increasingly driven to follow market principles even internally.
Bonuses were required to incentivize efforts on the part of employees in
the hope that these would lead to better performance. Another way of
introducing market principles was outsourcing. Activities which the
company itself would traditionally carry out were contracted out to
external businesses, playing them off against one another to supply
services more cheaply than the company itself could do.
The market triumphed everywhere and broadened its radius of
action. Capitalism once again seemed unstoppable, with nothing to
prevent its rise. Then came the crisis of .


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and they were bitter about it. He laughed at them, and he thrashed
the man who complained loudest, a man who had lost every cent of
his money through Allison’s manipulations. Well, that was the way of
business. The old rule of conquest that might makes right had only
gone out of favour as applied to physical oppression. In everything
else, it still prevailed; and Allison was its chief exponent.
The years of manhood. The panorama was a swiftly moving one
now. Combinations and consolidations had followed closely one upon
the other; brilliant and bewildering shiftings of the pieces on the
chess board of his particular business. Other players had become
confused in all these kaleidoscopic changes, some of which had
seemed meaningless; but not Allison. Every shift left him in a
position of more ruthless advantage, even in those moves which
were intended only to create confusion; and he pushed steadily
forward towards the one mark he had set; that there should
eventually be none other in the field than himself! It was because he
never flagged that he could do this. At no summit had he ever
paused for gratification over the extent of his climb, for a backward
glance over his fiercely contended pathway, for refreshment, for
breath; but, with that exhaustless physical vitality inherited from his
father and mental vitality inherited from his mother, he had kept his
pace forward, plunging onward, from summit to still higher summit,
and never asking that there might be one highest peak to which he
could attain, and rest! True, sometimes he had thought, on the
upward way, that at the summit he might pause, but had that
summit been the highest, with none other luring him in the distant
sky, he would have been disappointed.
So it was that he had come this far, and the roadway to his
present height was marked by the cripples he had left behind him,
without compunction, without mercy, without compassion. Bankrupts
strewed his way, broken men of purpose higher than his own, useful
factors in the progress of human life, builders and creators who had
advanced the interest of the commonwealth, but who had been
more brilliant in construction than they had been in reaping the
rewards of their building. It was for Allison to do this. It had been
his specialty; the reaping of rewards. It had been his faculty to
permit others to build, to encourage them in it, and then, when the
building was done, to wrest it away from the builders. That marked
him as the greatest commercial genius of his time; and he had much
applause for it.
Women. Yes, there had been women, creatures of a common
mould with whom he had amused himself, had taken them in their
freshness, and broken them, and thrown them away; this in his
earlier years. But in his maturity, he had bent all his strength to a
greater passion; the acquirement of all those other things which
men had wanted and held most dear, among them acquisition, and
power, and success. Perhaps it had been bad for him, this
concentration, for now it left him, at the height of his maturity, with
mistaken fancies, with long pent fires, with disproportionate desires.
Bringing to these, he had the tremendously abnormal moral effect of
never having been thwarted in a thing upon which he had set his
mind, and of believing, by past accomplishment, that anything upon
which he had set his wish must be his, or else every victory he had
ever gained would be swept aside and made of no value. He must
accomplish, or die!
He was without God, this man; he had nothing within him which
conceded, for a moment, a greater power than his own. In all his
mental imagery, which was rich enough in material things, there was
no conception of a Deity, or of a need for one. To what should he
pray, and for what, when he had himself to rely upon? Worship was
an idealistic diversion, a poetic illusion, the refuge of the weak, who
excused their lack of strength by ascribing it to a mysterious
something beyond the control of any man. He tolerated the popular
notion that there must be a God, as he tolerated codes of social
ethics; the conventions which laid down, for instance, what a
gentleman might or might not do, externally, and still remain a
gentleman. In the meantime, if a man-made law came between him
and the accomplishment of his ends, he broke it, without a trace of
thought that he might be wrong. Laws were the mutual safeguard of
the weak, to protect themselves against the encroachment of the
strong; and it was in the equally natural province of the strong to
break down those safeguards. In the same way he disregarded
moral laws. They, too, were for the upholding of the weak, and the
mere fact that they existed was proof enough that they were an
acknowledgment of the right of the strong to break them.
There is a mistake here. It lies in the statement that Allison
recognised no God. He did. Allison. Not Allison, the man, but the
unconquerable will of Allison, a will which was a divinity in itself. He
believed in it, centred on it all his faith, poured out to it all the
fervidness of his heart, of his mind, of his spirit, of his body. He
worshipped it!
So it was that he came to the consideration of the one thing which
had attempted to deny itself to him. Gail! It seemed monstrous to
him that she had set herself against him. It was incredible that she
should have a will, which, if she persisted, should prove superior to
his own. Why, he had set his mind upon her from the first! The time
had suddenly arrived when he was ripe for her, and she had come.
He had not even given a thought to the many suitors who had
dangled about her. She was for none of them. She was for him, and
he had waited in patience until she was tired of amusing herself, and
until he had wrought the big ambition towards which her coming,
and her impulse, and the new fire she had kindled in him, had
directed him. She had been seriously in earnest in withholding
herself from him. She was determined upon it. She believed now, in
her soul, that she could keep to that determination. At first he had
been amused by it, as a man holds off the angry onslaught of a
child; but, in this last interview with her, there had come a moment
when he had felt his vast compulsion valueless; and it had angered
him.
A flame raged through his veins which fairly shook him with its
violence. It was not only the reflex of his determination to have her,
but it was the terrific need of her which had grown up in him. Have
her? Of course he would have her! If she would not come to him
willingly, he would take her! If she could not share in the ecstasy of
possession which he had so long anticipated, she need not. She was
not to be considered in it any more than he had considered any
other adverse factor in the attainment of anything he had desired.
He was possessed of a rage now, which centred itself upon one
object, and one alone. Gail! She was his new summit, his new peak,
the final one where he had planned to rest; but now his angry
thought was to attain it, and spurn it, broken and crumbled, as had
been all the other barriers to his will, and press ruthlessly onward
into higher skies, he knew not where. It was no time now, to think
on that. Gail first!
 CHAPTER XXX
THE FLUTTER OF A SHEET OF MUSIC

G ail, in a pretty little rose-coloured morning robe, with soft frills of

lace around her white throat and at her white elbows, sat on the
floor of the music room amid a chaos of sheet music. She was
humming a gay little song suggested by one of the titles through
which she had leafed, and was gradually sorting her music for the
yacht party; instrumental pieces here, popular things there, another
little pile of old-fashioned glees which the assembled crowd might
sing, just here a little stack of her own solos, nearby the rector’s
favourites, between the two their duets. It was her part in one of the
latter she was humming now, missing, as she sang, the strong
accompaniment of the Reverend Smith Boyd’s mellow voice. She was
more peaceful this morning than she had been for many days.
The butler came through the hall, and Gail looked up with a
suppressed giggle as she saw him pass the door. She always had an
absurd idea that his hinges should be oiled.
“Miss Gail is not at home, sir,” she heard the butler say, and Gail
paused with a sheet of music suspended in her hand, the whole
expression of her face changing. She had only given instructions that
one person should receive that invariable message.
“I beg your pardon, sir!” was the next observation Gail heard, in a
tone of as near startled remonstrance as was possible to the butler’s
wooden voice.
There was a sound almost as of a scuffle, and then Allison, with
his top coat on his arm and his hat in his hand, strode to the
doorway of the music room, followed immediately by the butler, who
looked as if his hair had been peeled a little at the edges. Allison had
apparently brushed roughly past him, and had disturbed his
equanimity for the balance of his life.
Gail was on her feet almost instantaneously with the apparition in
the doorway, and she still held the sheet of music which she had
been about to deposit on one of the piles. Allison’s eyes had a queer
effect of being sunken, and there was a strange nervous tension in
him. Gail dismissed the butler with a nod.
“You were informed that I am not at home,” she said.
“I meant to see you,” he replied, with a certain determined
insolence in his tone which she could not escape. There was a
triumph in it, too, as if his having swept the butler aside were only a
part of his imperious intention. “I have some things to say to you to
which you must listen.”
“You had better say them all then, because this is your last
opportunity,” she told him, pale with anger, and with a quaver in her
voice which she would have given much to suppress.
He cast on her a look which blazed. He had not slept since he had
seen her last. He smiled, and the smile was a snarl, displaying his
teeth. Something more than anger crept into Gail’s pallor.
“I have come to ask you again to marry me, Gail. The matter is
too vital to be let pass without the most serious effort of which I am
capable. I can not do without you. I have a need for you which is
greater than anything of which you could conceive. I come to you
humbly, Gail, to ask you to reconsider your hasty answer of last
night. I want you to marry me.”
For just a moment his eyes had softened, and Gail felt a slight
trace of pity for him; but in the pity itself there was revulsion.
“I can not,” she told him.
“You must!” he immediately rejoined. “As I would build up an
empire to win you, I would destroy one to win you. You spoke last
night of what you called the cruelty and trickery of the building up of
my big transportation monopoly. If it is that which stands between
us, it shall not do so for a moment longer. Marry me, and I will stop
it just where it is. Why, I only built this for you, and if you don’t like
it, I shall have nothing to do with it.” In that he lied, and consciously.
He knew that the moment he had made sure of her his ambition to
conquer would come uppermost again, and that he would pursue his
dream of conquest with even more ardour than before, because he
had been refreshed.
“That would make no difference, Mr. Allison,” she replied. “I told
you, last night, that I would not marry you because I do not, and
could not, love you. There does not need to be any other reason.”
There was in her an inexplicable tension, a reflex of his own, but,
though her face was still pale, she stood very calmly before him.
The savageness which was in him, held too long in leash, sprang
into his face, his eyes, his lips, the set of his jaws. He advanced a
step towards her. His hands contracted.
“I shall not again ask you to love me,” he harshly stated; “but you
must marry me. I have made up my mind to that.”
“Impossible!” Angry now and contemptuous.
“I’ll make you! There is no resource I will not use. I’ll bankrupt
your family. I’ll wipe it off the earth.”
Gail’s nails were pressing into her palms. She felt that her lips
were cold. Her eyes were widening, as the horror of him began to
grow on her. He was glaring at her now, and there was no attempt
to conceal the savage cruelty on his face.
“I’ll compromise you,” he went on. “I’ll connect your name with
mine in such a way that marriage with me will be your only
resource. I’ll be an influence you can’t escape. There will not be a
step you can take in which you will not feel that I am the master of
it. Marry you? I’ll have you if it takes ten years! I’ll have no other
end in life. I’ll put into that one purpose all the strength, and all the
will that I have put into the accomplishment of everything which I
have done; and the longer you delay me the sooner I’ll break you
when I do get you.”
Out of her very weakness had come strength; out of her
overwhelming humiliation had come pride, and though the blood had
left her face waxen and cold, something within her discovered a will
which was as strong in resistance as his was in attack. She knew it,
and trembled in the knowledge of it.
“You can’t make me marry you,” she said, with infinite scorn and
contempt.
He clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. Into his eyes there
sprang a blaze which she had never before seen, but dimly, in the
eyes of any man; but she needed no experience to tell her its
despicable meaning. His lips, which had been snarling, suddenly
took a downward twitch, and were half parted. His nostrils were
distended, and the blood, flooding into his face, empurpled it.
“Then I’ll have you anyhow!” he hoarsely told her, and, his arms
tensed and his head slightly lowered forward, he made as if to
advance toward her. He saw in her frightened eyes that she would
scream, but he did not know that at that moment she could not. Her
heart seemed to have lost its action, and she stood, trembling, faint,
in the midst of her strewn music, with the sensation that the room
was turning dark.
The house was very quiet. Mrs. Sargent and Mrs. Davies were
upstairs. The servants were all in the rear of the house, or below, or
in the upper rooms, at their morning work. He turned swiftly and
closed the door of the music room, then he whirled again towards
her, with ferocity in his eyes. He came slowly, every movement of
him alive with ponderous strength. He was a maniac. He was insane.
He was frenzied by one mad thought which had swept out of his
universe every other consideration, and the glut to kill was no more
fearful than the purpose which possessed him now.
Gail, standing slight, fragile, her brown eyes staring, her brown
hair dishevelled about her white brow, felt every atom of strength
leaving her, devoured in the overwhelming might of this monstrous
creature. The sheet of music, which she had been holding all this
time, dropped from her nerveless fingers and fluttered to the floor!
That noise, slight as it was, served to arrest the progress of the
man for just an instant. He was in no frame to reason, but some
instinct urged him to speed. He crouched slightly, as a wild beast
might. But the flutter of that sheet of music had done more for Gail
than it had for him. It had loosed the paralysis which had held her,
had broken the fascination of horror with which she had been
spellbound. Just behind her was a low French window which led to a
small side balcony. With one bound she burst this open, she did not
know how, and had leaped over the light balcony rail, and ran across
the lawn to the rectory gate, up the steps and into the side door,
and into the study, where the Reverend Smith Boyd sat toiling over a
sermon.
 CHAPTER XXXI
GAIL BREAKS A PROMISE

T he Whitecap would have been under way except for the delay of
the gay little Mrs. Babbitt and her admiring husband, who sent
word that they could not arrive until after dinner, so the yacht, long
and low and slender and glistening white, lay in the middle of the
Hudson River, while her guests, bundled warmly against the crisp
breeze, gathered in the forward shelter deck and watched the
beginnings of the early sunset.
“I like Doctor Boyd in his yachting cap,” commented Lucile, as that
young man joined them, with a happy mother on his arm.
“It takes away that deadly clerical effect,” laughed Arly. “His long
coat makes him look like the captain, and he’s ever so much more
handsome.”
“I don’t mind being the topic of discussion so long as I’m present,”
commented the Reverend Smith Boyd, glancing around the group as
if in search of some one.
“It rather restricts the conversation,” Mrs. Helen Davies observed,
at the same time watching, with a smile, the tableau of her sister
Grace and Jim Sargent. Gail and herself had taken Grace out
shopping, and had forced on her sedate taste a neat and “fetching”
yachting costume, from flowing veiled cap to white shoes, which had
dropped about twenty years from her usual appearance, and had
brought a renewed enthusiasm to the eyes of her husband.
The cherub-cheeked Marion Kenneth glanced wistfully over at the
rail where Dick Rodley, vieing with the sunset in splendour, stood
chatting with easy Ted Teasdale and the stiff Gerald Fosland.
 “Where’s Gail?” demanded the cherub-cheeked one.
“It’s time that young lady was up on deck,” decided Arly, and rose.
“She’s probably taking advantage of the opportunity to dress for
dinner,” surmised Mrs. Davies. “In fact, I think it’s a good idea for all
of us,” but the sunset was too potent to leave for a few moments,
and she sat still.
Where indeed was Gail? In her beautiful little curly maple
stateroom, sitting on the edge of a beautiful little curly maple bed,
and digging two small fists into the maple-brown coverlet. The pallor
of the morning had not yet left her face, and there were circles
around the brown eyes which gave them a wan pathos; there was a
crease of pain and worry, too, in the white brow.
Gail had come to the greatest crisis in her life. To begin with,
Allison. She would not permit herself to dwell on the most horrible
part of her experience with him. That she put out of her mind, as
best she could, with a shudder. She hoped, in the time to come, to
be free of the picture of him as he advanced slowly towards her in
the music room, with that frenzied glare in his eyes and that
terrifying evil look upon his face. She hoped, in the time to come, to
be free of that awful fear which seemed to have gripped her heart
with a clutch that had left deep imprints upon it, but, just now, she
let the picture and the fear remain before her eyes and in her heart,
and centred upon her grave responsibilities.
So far she had told no one of what had occurred that morning.
When she had rushed into the rector’s study he had sprung up, and,
seeing the fright in her face and that she was tottering and ready to
fall, he had caught her in his strong arms, and she had clung
trustfully to him, half faint, until wild sobs had come to her relief.
Even in her incoherence, however, even in her wild disorder of
emotion, she realised that there was danger, not only to her but to
every one she loved, in the man from whom she had run away; and
she could not tell the young rector any more than that she had been
frightened. Had she so much as mentioned the name of Allison, she
instinctively knew that the Reverend Smith Boyd, in whom there was
some trace of impetuosity, might certainly have forgotten his cloth
and become mere man, and have strode straight across to the house
before Allison could have collected his dazed wits; and she did not
dare add that encounter to her list of woes. It was strange how
instinctively she had headed for the Reverend Smith Boyd’s study;
strange then, but not now. In that moment of flying straight to the
protection of his arms, she knew something about herself, and about
the Reverend Smith Boyd, too. She knew now why she had refused
Howard Clemmens, and Willis Cunningham, and Houston Van Ploon,
and Dick Rodley; poor Dick! and Allison, and all the others. She
frankly and complacently admitted to herself that she loved the
Reverend Smith Boyd, but she put that additional worry into the
background. It could be fought out later. She would have been very
happy about it if she had had time, although she could see no end
to that situation but unhappiness.
These threats of Allison’s. How far could he go with them, how far
could he make them true? All the way. She had a sickening sense
that there was no idleness in his threats. He had both the will and
the power to carry them out. He would bankrupt her family; he
would employ slander against her, from which the innocent have less
defence than the guilty; he would set himself viciously to wreck her
happiness at every turn. The long arm of his vindictiveness would
follow her to her home, and set a barrier of scandalous report even
between her and her friends.
But let her first take up the case of her Uncle Jim. She had not
dared go with her news to hot-tempered Jim Sargent. His first
impulse would have been one of violence, and she could not see
that a murder on her soul, and her Uncle Jim in jail as a murderer,
and her name figuring large, with her photograph in the pages of
the free and entirely uncurbed metropolitan press, would help any
one in the present dilemma. Yet even a warning, to her Uncle Jim, of
impending financial danger might bring about this very same result,
for he had a trick of turning suddenly from the kind and indulgent
and tremendously admiring uncle, into a stern parent, and firing one
imperative question after another at her, in the very image and
likeness of her own father; and that was an authoritative process
which she knew she could not resist. Yet Uncle Jim must be
protected! How? It was easy enough to say that he must be, and yet
could he be? Could he even protect himself? She shook her head as
she gazed, with unseeing eyes, out of the daintily curtained port
hole upon the river, with its swarm of bustling small craft.
Where to turn for advice, or even to have a sharer in the burden
which she felt must surely crush her. There was no one. It was a
burden she must bear alone, unless she could devise some plan of
effective action, and the sense of how far she had been responsible
for this condition of affairs was one which oppressed her, and
humbled her, and deepened the circles about her woe-smitten eyes.
She had been guilty. In a rush of remorse and repentance, she
over-blamed herself. She did not allow, in her severe self-injustice,
for the natural instincts which had led her into a full and free
commingling with all this new circle; for, as Arly later put it for her
by way of comfort, how was she to know if she did not find out.
Now, however, she allowed herself no grain of comfort, or sympathy,
or relief, from the stern self-arraignment through which she put
herself. She had been wicked, she told herself. Had she delved
deeply enough into her own heart, and acknowledged what she saw
there, and had she abided by that knowledge, she could have spared
her many suitors a part of the pain and humiliation she had caused
them by her refusal. She had not been surprised by any of them.
With the infliction of but very slight pain, she could have stopped
them long before they came to the point of proposal, she saw that
now. Why had she not done so? Pride! That was the answer. The
pleasure of being so eagerly sought, the actually spoken evidence of
her popularity, and the flattery of having aroused in all these big
men emotions so strong that they took the sincere form of the
offering of a lifetime of devotion. And she, who had prated to herself
so seriously of marriage, had held it as so sacred a thing, she had so
toyed with it, and had toyed, too, with that instinct in these good
men!
 In the light of her experience with Allison, she began to distrust
her own sincerity, and for some minutes she floundered in that
Slough of Despond.
But no, out of that misery she was able to emerge clear of soul.
Her worst fault had been folly. An instinctive groping for that other
part of her, which nature had set somewhere, unlabelled, to make of
the twain a complete and perfect human entity, had led her into all
her entanglements, even with Allison. And again the darkness
deepened around her troubled eyes.
After all, had she but known it, she had a greater fault than folly.
Inexperience. Her charm was another, her youth, her beauty, her
virility—and her sympathy! These were her true faults, and the ones
for which every attractive girl must suffer. There is no escape. It is
the great law of compensation. Nature bestows no gift of value for
which she does not exact a corresponding price.
Gail took her little fists from their pressure into the brown coverlet,
and held her temples between the fingertips of either hand; and the
brown hair, springing into wayward ringlets from the salt-breeze
which blew in at the half opened window, rippled down over her
slender hands, as if to soothe and comfort them. She had been
wasting her time in introspection and self-analysis when there was
need for decisive action! Fortunately she had a respite until Monday
morning. In the past few days of huge commercial movements
which so vitally interested her, she had become acquainted with
business methods, to a certain extent, and she knew that nothing
could be done on Saturday afternoon or Sunday; therefore her Uncle
Jim was safe for two nights and a day. Then Allison would deny the
connection of her Uncle Jim’s road with the A.-P., and the beginning
of the destruction of the Sargent family would be thoroughly
accomplished! She had been given a thorough grasp of how easily
that could be done. What could she do in two nights and a day? It
was past her ingenuity to conceive. She must have help!
But from whom could she receive it? Tod Boyd? The same reason
which made her think of him first made her swiftly place him last.
Her Uncle Jim? Too hotheaded. Her Aunt Grace? Too inexperienced.
Her Aunt Helen? Too conventional. Lucile, Ted, Dick? She laughed.
Arly?
There was a knock on her door, and Arly herself appeared.
“Selfish,” chided Arly. “We’re all wanting you.”
“That’s comforting,” smiled Gail. “I have just been being all alone
in the world, on the most absolutely deserted island of which you
can conceive. Arly, sit down. I want to tell you something.”
The black hair and the brown hair cuddled close together, while
Gail, her tongue once loosened, poured out in a torrent all the pent-
up misery which had been accumulating within her for the past
tempestuous weeks; and Arly, her eyes glistening with the
excitement of it all, kept her exclamations of surprise and fright and
indignation and horror, and everything else, strictly to such low
monosyllables as would not impede the gasping narration.
“I’d like to kill him!” said Arly, in a low voice of startling intensity,
and jumping to her feet she paced up and down the confines of the
little stateroom. Among all the other surprises of recent events,
there was none more striking than this vast change in the usually
cool and sarcastic Arly, who had not, until her return from Gail’s
home, permitted herself an emotion in two years. She came back to
the bed with a sudden swift knowledge that Gail had been dry-eyed
all through this recital, though her lips were quivering. She should
have cried. Instead she was sitting straight up, staring at Arly with
patient inquiry. She had told all her dilemma, and all her grief, and
all her fear; and now she was waiting.
“The only way in which that person can be prevented from
attacking your Uncle Jim, which would be his first step, is to attack
him before he can do anything,” said Arly, pacing up and down, her
fingers clasped behind her slender back, her black brows knotted,
her graceful head bent toward the floor.
“He is too powerful,” protested Gail.
“That makes him weak,” returned Arly quickly. “In every great
power there is one point of great weakness. Tell me again about this
tremendously big world monopoly.”
 Patiently, and searching her memory for details, Gail recited over
again all which Allison had told her about his wonderful plan of
empire; and even now, angry and humiliated and terror stricken as
she was, Gail could not repress a feeling of admiration for the
bigness of it. It was that which had impressed her in the beginning.
“It’s wonderful,” commented Arly, catching a trace of that spirit of
the exultation which hangs upon the unfolding of fairyland; and she
began to pace the floor again. “Why, Gail, it is the most colossal
piece of thievery the world has ever known!” And she walked in
silence for a time. “That is the thing upon which we can attack him.
We are going to stop it.”
Gail rose, too.
“How?” she asked. “Arly, we couldn’t, just we two girls!”
“Why not?” demanded Arly, stopping in front of her. “Any plan like
that must be so full of criminal crookedness that exposure alone is
enough to put an end to it.”
“Exposure,” faltered Gail, and struggled automatically with a
lifelong principle. “It was told to me in confidence.”
Arly looked at her in astonishment.
“I could shake you,” she declared, and instead put her arm around
Gail. “Did that person betray no confidence when he came to your
uncle’s house this morning! Moreover, he told you this merely to
over-awe you with the glitter of what he had done. He made that
take the place of love! Confidence! I’ll never do anything with so
much pleasure in my life as to betray yours right now! If you don’t
expose that person, I will! If there’s any way we can damage him, I
intend to see that it is done; and if there’s any way after that to
damage him again and again, I want to do it!”
For the first time in that miserable day, Gail felt a thrill of hope,
and Arly, at that moment, had, to her, the aspect of a colossal figure,
an angel of brightness in the night of her despair! She felt that she
could afford to sob now, and she did it.
“Do you suppose that would save Uncle Jim?” she asked, when
they had both finished a highly comforting time together.
 “It will save everybody,” declared Arly.
“I hope so,” pondered Gail. “But we can’t do it ourselves, Arly.
Whom shall we get to help us?”
The smile on Arly’s face was a positive illumination for a moment,
and then she laughed.
“Gerald,” she replied. “You don’t know what a dear he is!” and she
rang for a cabin boy.
 CHAPTER XXXII
GERALD FOSLAND MAKES A SPEECH

G erald Fosland, known to be so formal that he had once dressed

to answer an emergency call from a friend at the hospital,
because the message came in at six o’clock, surprised his guests by
appearing before them, in the salon just before dinner, in his driving
coat and with his motor cap in his hand.
“Sorry,” he informed them, with his stiff bow, “but an errand of
such importance that it can not be delayed, causes Mrs. Fosland and
myself to return to the city immediately for an hour or so. I am
sincerely apologetic, and I trust that you will have a jolly dinner.”
“Is Gail going with you?” inquired the alert Mrs. Helen Davies,
observing Gail in the gangway adjusting her furs.
“She has to chaperon me, while Gerald is busy,” Arly glibly
explained. “Onery, Orey, Ickery, Ann, Filison, Foloson, Nicholas,
John; Queevy, Quavy, English Navy, Stigalum, Stagalum, Buck.
You’re it, Aunt Grace,” counted out Arly. “You and Uncle Jim have to
be hosts. Good-bye!” and she sailed out to the deck, followed by the
still troubled Gail, who managed to accomplish the laughing adieus
for which Arly had set the precedence.
A swift ride in the launch, in the cool night air, to the landing; a
brisk walk to the street, and, since no one had expected to come
ashore until Monday, a search for a taxi; then Gerald, chatting with
correct pleasantness through his submerged preoccupation, having
seen the ladies safe under shelter, even if it were but the roof of a
night hawk taxi, stopped at the first saloon, a queer place, of a
sodden type which he had never before seen and would never see
again. There he phoned half a dozen messages. There were four
eager young men waiting in the reception room of the Fosland
house, when Gerald’s party arrived, and three more followed them
up the steps.
Gerald aided in divesting the ladies of their wraps, and slipped his
own big top coat into the hands of William, and saw to his tie and
the set of his waistcoat and the smoothness of his hair, before he
stalked into the reception parlour and bowed stiffly.
“Gentlemen,” he observed, giving his moustache one last
smoothing, “first of all, have you brought with you the written
guarantees which I required from your respective chiefs, that, in
whatsoever comes from the information I am about to give you, the
names of your informants shall, under no circumstances, appear in
print?”
One luckless young man, a fat-cheeked one, with a pucker in the
corner of his lips where his cigar should have been, was unable to
produce the necessary document, and he was under a scrutiny too
close to give him a chance to write it.
“Sorry,” announced Gerald, with polite contrition. “As this is a very
strict condition, I must ask you to leave the room while I address the
remaining gentlemen.”
The remaining gentlemen, of whom there were now eleven,
grinned appreciatively. Hickey would have been the best newspaper
man in New York if he were not such a careless slob. He was so
good that he was the only man from the Planet. The others had sent
two, and three; for Gerald’s message, while very simple, had been
most effective. He had merely announced that he was prepared to
provide them with an international sensation, involving some
hundreds of billions of dollars—and he had given his right name!
The unfortunate Hickey made a violent pretence of search through
all his pockets.
“I must have lost it,” he piteously declared. “Won’t you take my
written word that you won’t be mentioned?” and he looked up at the
splendidly erect Gerald with that honest appeal in his eyes which
had deceived so many.
“Sorry,” announced Gerald; “but it wouldn’t be sportsmanlike,
since it would be quite unfair to these other gentlemen.”
“Hold the stuff ’til I telephone,” begged Hickey. “Say, if I get that
written guarantee up here in fifteen minutes, will it do?”
Gerald looked him speculatively in the eye.
“If you telephone, and can then assure me, on your word of
honour, that the document I require shall be in the house before you
leave, I shall permit you to remain,” he decreed; and Hickey looked
him quite soberly in the eye for half a minute.
“I’ll have it here all right,” he decided, and sprang for the
telephone, and came back in three minutes with his word of honour.
They could hear him, from the library, yelling, from the time he gave
the number until he hung up the receiver, and if there was ever
urgency in a man’s voice, it was in the voice of Hickey.
Gerald Fosland took a commanding position in the corner of the
room, where he could see the countenances of each of the eager
young gentlemen present. He stood behind a chair, with his hands
on the back of it, in his favourite position for responding to a toast.
“Gentlemen; Edward E. Allison (Twelve young gentlemen who had
been leaning forward with strained interest, and their mouths half
open to help them hear, suddenly jerked bolt upright. The little squib
over under the statue of Diana, dropped his lead pencil, and came
up with a purple face. Hickey, with a notebook two inches wide in
one hand, jabbed down a scratch to represent Allison) is about to
complete a transportation system encircling the globe. (The little
squib on the end choked on his tongue. Hickey made a ring on his
note pad, to represent the globe, and while he waited for the
sensation to subside, put a buckle on it.) The acquisition of the
foreign railroads will be made possible only by a war, which is
already arranged. (The little squib got writer’s cramp. Hickey waited
for details. The hollow-cheeked reporter grabbed for a cigarette, but
with no intention of lighting it.) The war, which will be between
Germany and France, will begin within a month. France, unable to
raise a war fund otherwise, will sell her railroads. The Russian line is
already being taken from its present managers, and will be turned
over to Allison’s world syndicate within a week. The important
steamship lines will become involved in financial difficulties, which
have already been set afoot in England. Following these events will
come a successful rebellion in India, and the independence of all the
British colonies. (The little squib laid down his pencil, and sat in
open-mouthed despair. He was three sentences behind, and knew
that he would be compelled to trust his memory and his imagination,
and neither were equal to this task. Hickey had seven serene jabs on
his notebook, and was peacefully framing his introductory
paragraph. A seraphic smile was on his thick lips, and his softened
eyes were gazing fondly into the fields of rich fancy. The hollow-
cheeked young man had cocked his cigarette perpendicularly, and he
was writing a few words with artistic precision. The red-headed
reporter was tearing off page after page of his notebook and stuffing
them loosely in his pocket. One of the boys, a thick-breasted one
with large hands, was making microscopic notes on the back of an
envelope, and had plenty of room to spare.) You will probably
require some tangible evidence that these large plans are on the
way to fulfilment. I call your attention to the fact that, last week, the
Russian Duomo began a violent agitation over the removal of Olaf
Petrovy, who was the controller of the entire Russian railroad
system. Day before yesterday, Petrovy was unfortunately
assassinated, and the agitation in the Duomo subsided. (Hickey only
nodded. His eyes glowed with the light of a poet. The little squib
sighed dejectedly.) This morning I read that France is greatly
incensed over a diplomatic breach in the German war office; and it is
commented that the breach is one which can not possibly be healed.
Kindly take note of the following facts. From the first to the eighth of
this month, Baron von Slachten, who is directly responsible for
Germany’s foreign relations, was seen in this city at the Fencing
Club, under the incognito of Henry Brokaw. Chevalier Duchambeau,
director of the combined banking interests of France, was here in
that same week, and was seen at the Montparnasse Cercle. He bore
the name of Andree Tirez. The Grand Duke Jan, of Russia, was here
as Ivan Strolesky. James Wellington Hodge, the master of the
banking system of practically all the world, outside the United
States, was here as E. E. Chalmers. Prince Nito of Japan, Yu-Hip-Lun
of China and Count Cassioni of Rome, were here at the same time;
and they all called on Edward E. Allison. (Furious writing on the part
of all the young gentlemen except the little squib and Hickey; the
former in an acute paralysis of body and mind and soul, and Hickey
in an acute ecstasy. He had symbols down for all the foreign
gentlemen named, a pretzel for the Baron, and had the local records
of Ivan Strolesky and Baron von Slachten up a tree. He had seen
them both, and interviewed the former.) Furthermore, gentlemen, I
will give you now the names of the eight financiers, who, with
Edward E. Allison, are interested in the formation of the
International Transportation Company, which proposes to control the
commerce of the world. These gentlemen are Joseph G. Clark (the
little squib jumped up and sat down. Hickey produced a long, low
whistle of unbounded joy. The hollow-faced one jerked the useless
cigarette from his mouth and threw it in the fireplace. The red-
headed reporter laughed hysterically, though he never stopped
writing. Every young gentleman there made one or another sharp
physical movement expressive of his astonishment and delight),
Eldridge Babbitt (more sensation), W. T. Chisholm (Hickey wrote the
rest of the list), Richard Haverman, Arthur Grandin, Robert E. Taylor,
A. L. Vance. I would suggest that, if you disturb these gentlemen in
the manner which I have understood you to be quite capable of
doing, you might secure from some one of them a trace of
corroboration of the things I have said. This is all.” He paused, and
bowed stiffly. “Gentlemen, I wish to add one word. I thank you for
your kind attention, and I desire to say that, while I have violated
to-night several of the rules which I had believed that I would
always hold unbroken, I have done so in the interest of a justice
which is greater than all other considerations. Gentlemen, good-
night.”
 “Have you a good photograph handy?” asked the squib,
awakening from his trance.
Nine young gentlemen put the squib right about that photograph.
Hickey was lost in the fields of Elysian phantasy, and the red-headed
reporter was still writing and stuffing loose pages in his pocket, and
the one with the beard was making a surreptitious sketch of Gerald
Fosland, to use on the first plausible occasion. He had in mind a
special article on wealthy clubmen at home.
“Company incorporated?” inquired Hickey, who was the most
practical poet of his time.
“I should consider that a pertinent question,” granted Gerald.
“Gentlemen, you will pardon me for a moment,” and he bowed
himself from the room.
He had meant to ask that one simple question and return, but, in
Arlene’s blue room, where sat two young women in a high state of
quiver, he had to make his speech all over again, verbatim, and
detail each interruption, and describe how they received the news,
and answer, several times, the variously couched question, if he
really thought their names would not be mentioned. It was fifteen
minutes before he returned, and he found the twelve young
gentlemen suffering with an intolerable itch to be gone! Five of the
young men were in the library, quarrelling, in decently low voices,
over the use of phone. The imperturbable Hickey, however, had it,
and he held on, handing in a story, embellished and coloured and
frilled and be-ribboned as he went, which would make the cylinders
on the presses curl up.
“I am sorry to advise you, gentlemen, that I am unable to tell you
if the International Transportation Company is, or is about to be,
incorporated,” reported Gerald gravely, and he signalled to William to
open the front door.
The air being too cold, however, he had it closed presently, for
now he was the centre of an interrogatory circle from every degree
of which came questions so sharply pointed that they seemed to
flash as they darted towards him. Gerald Fosland listened to this
babble of conversation with a courtesy beautiful to behold, but at
the first good pause, he advised them that he had given them all the
information at his command, and once more caused the door to be
opened; whereupon the eager young gentlemen, with the exception
of the squib, who was on his knees under a couch looking for a lost
subway ticket, shook hands cordially and admiringly with the host of
the evening, and bulged out into the night.
As the rapt and enchanted Hickey passed out of the door, a grip
like a pair of ice tongs caught him by the arm, and drew him gently
but firmly back.
“Sorry,” observed Gerald; “but you don’t go.”
“Hasn’t that damn boy got here yet?” demanded Hickey, in an
immediate mood for assassination. He was a large young man, and
defective messenger boys were the bane of his existence.
“William says not,” replied Gerald.
“For the love of Mike, let me go!” pleaded Hickey. “This stuff has
to be handled while it’s still sizzling! It’s the biggest story of the
century! That boy’ll be here any minute.”
“Sorry,” regretfully observed Gerald; “but I shall be compelled to
detain you until he arrives.”
“Can’t do it!” returned the desperate Hickey. “I have to go!” and
he made a dash for the door.
Once more the ice tongs clutched him by the shoulder and sank
into the flesh.
“If you try that again, young man, I shall be compelled to thrash
you,” stated the host, again mildly.
Hickey looked at him, very thoroughly. Gerald was a slim waisted
gentleman, but he had broad shoulders and a depressingly calm eye,
and he probably exercised twenty minutes every morning by an
open window, after his cold plunge, and took a horseback ride, and
walked a lot, and played polo, and a few other effete things like that.
Hickey sat down and waited, and, though the night was cold, he
mopped his brow until the messenger came!
 CHAPTER XXXIII
CHICKEN, OR STEAK?

O n the outbreak of a bygone rudeness between the United States

and Spain, one free and entirely uncurbed metropolitan paper,
unable to adequately express its violent emotions on the subject,
utilised its whole front page with the one word “War!” printed in red
ink, and since this edition was jumped off the press as fast as that
word could be matrixed and cast, there was not another line
anywhere in the paper about the subject which was so prominently
indexed, and the read-overs about the latest briberies and murders
and scandals had no beginnings at all. But that was good journalism.
The public had been expecting war for some days. They knew what
it was all about, and here it was. They bought up that edition with
avidity, and read the one word of news, which they had seen from
afar, and threw down the paper, satisfied.
Now, however, the free and entirely uncurbed, having risen most
gloriously in the past to every emergency, no matter how great,
positively floundered in the very wealth of its opportunities. To begin
with, the free and entirely uncurbed, usually a unit in what
constituted the news of the day, found itself ignominiously scattered,
foozled in its judgment, inadequate in its expression of anything;
and one brilliant head writer, after trying in vain to combine the
diverse elements of this uncomfortably huge sensation, landed on
the single word “Yow!” and went out, in a daze, for a drink. One
paper landed on the Franco-German War as the leading thrill in this
overly rich combination of news, one took up the greed of Allison,
one featured the world monopoly, one the assured downfall of
England, and one, that represented by the squib, the general
absorption of everything by the cereal trust.
Saturday night, however, saw no late extras. The “story” was too
big to touch without something more tangible than the word of even
so substantial a man as Gerald Fosland; and long before any of the
twelve eager young gentlemen had reached the office, the scout
brigade, hundreds strong, were sniffing over every trail and yelping
over every scent.
They traced the visiting diplomats from the time they had stepped
down their respective gangplanks to the time they walked up them
again. They besieged and bombarded and beleaguered the eight
members of the International Transportation Company, or as many
of them as they could locate, and they even found their way out to
Gerald Fosland’s yacht, in mad pursuit of Eldridge Babbitt. Here,
however, they were foiled, for Gerald, ordering the anchor hoist at
the first hail, stepped out on the deck from his belated dinner, and
informed the gentlemen of the press that the rights of hospitality on
his yacht would be held inviolate, whereupon he headed for Sandy
Hook. The scout brigade were also unable to locate Joseph G. Clark,
the only multi-millionaire in America able to crawl in a hole and pull
the hole in after him, Robert E. Taylor, who never permitted anybody
but a personal friend to speak to him from dinner time on, and
Edward E. Allison, of whom there had been no trace since noon.
They might just as well not have found the others, for neither
Chisholm, nor Haverman, nor Grandin, nor Vance, could be induced
to make any admissions, be trapped into a yes or no, or grunt in the
wrong place. They had grown up with the art of interviewing, and
had kept one lap ahead of it, in obedience to nature’s first law,
which, as every school boy knows, though older people may have
forgotten it, is the law of self-preservation.
Until three o’clock in the morning every newspaper office in New
York was a scene of violent gloom. Throughout all the city, and into
many outside nooks and crannies, were hundreds of human
tentacles, burrowing like moles into the sandy soil of news, but
unearthing nothing of any value. The world’s biggest sensation was
in those offices, and they couldn’t touch it with a pair of tongs! Nor
were libel suits, or any such trivial considerations, in the minds of
the astute managers of the free and entirely uncurbed. The
deterrent was that the interests involved were so large that one
might as well sit on a keg of gunpowder and light it, as to make the
slightest of errors. The gentlemen mentioned as the organisers of
the International Transportation Company collectively owned about
all the money, and all the power, and all the law, in the gloriously
independent United States of America; and if they got together on
any one subject, such as the squashing of a newspaper, for instance,
something calm and impressive was likely to happen. On the other
hand, if the interesting story the free and entirely uncurbed had in
its possession were true, the squashing would be reversed, and the
freeness and entirely uncurbedness would be still more firmly seated
than ever, which is the palladium of our national liberties; and
Heaven be good to us.
It was a distressing evening. Whole reams of copy, more
throbbing than any fiction, more potent than any explosion, more
consequential than any war, hung on the “hold” hooks, and grew
cold! Whole banks of galleys of the same gorgeous stuff stood on
the racks, set and revised, and ready to be plated, and not a line of
it could be released!
Towards morning there was an army of newspaper men so
worried and distressed, and generally consumed with the mad
passion of restraint, that there was scarcely a fingernail left in the
profession, and frightened-eyed copy boys hid behind doors.
Suddenly a dozen telegraph operators, in as many offices, jumped
from their desks, as if they had all been touched at the same instant
by a powerful current from their instruments, and shouted varying
phrases, a composite of which would be nearest expressed by:
“Let ’er go!”
It had been eight o’clock in the evening in New York when Gerald
Fosland had first given out his information, and at that moment it
was one A.M. in Berlin. At three A.M., Berlin time, which was ten
P.M. in New York, the Baron von Slachten, who had been detained
by an unusual stress of diplomatic business, strolled to his favourite
café. At three-five, the Baron von Slachten became the most thought
about man in his city, but the metropolitan press of Berlin is slightly
fettered and more or less curbed, and there are certain formalities to
be observed. It is probable, therefore, that the Baron might have
gone about his peaceful way for two or three days, had not a fool
American, in the advertising branch of one of the New York papers,
in an entire ignorance of decent formalities, walked straight out
Unter den Linden, to Baron von Slachten’s favourite café, and,
picking out the Baron at a table with four bushy-faced friends, made
this cheerful remark, in the manner and custom of journalists in his
native land:
“Well, Baron, the International Transportation Company has
confessed. Could you give me a few words on the subject?”
The Baron, who had been about to drink a stein of beer, set down
his half liter and stared at the young man blankly. His face turned
slowly yellow, and he rose.
“Lass bleiben,” the Baron ordered the handy persons who were
about to remove the cheerful advertising representative and
incarcerate him for life, and then the Baron walked stolidly out of the
café, and rode home, and wrote for an hour or so, and ate a heavy
early breakfast, and returned to his study, and obligingly shot
himself.
This was at seven A.M., Berlin time, which was two A.M., in New
York; and owing to the nervousness of an old woman servant, the
news reached New York at three A.M., and the big wheels began to
go around.
Where was Edward E. Allison? There was nothing the free and
entirely uncurbed wanted to know so much as that; but the f. and e.
u. was doomed to disappointment in that one desire of its heart.
Even as he had stumbled down the steps of the Sargent house,
Allison was aware of the hideous thing he had done; aware, too,
that Jim Sargent was as violent as good-natured men are apt to be.
This thought, it must be said in justice to Allison, came last and went
away first. It was from himself that he tried to run away, when he
shot his runabout up through the Park and into the north country,
and, by devious roads, to a place which had come to him as if by
inspiration; the Willow Club, which was only open in the
summertime, and employed a feeble old caretaker in the winter. To
this haven, bleak and cold as his own numbed soul, Allison drove in
mechanical firmness, and ran his machine back into the garage, and
closed the doors on it, and walked around to the kitchen, where he
found old Peabody smoking a corncob pipe, and laboriously mending
a pair of breeches.
“Why, howdy, Mr. Allison,” greeted Peabody, rising, and shoving up
his spectacles. “It’s a treat to see anybody these days. I ain’t had a
visitor for nigh onto a month. There ain’t any provisions in the
house, but if you’d like anything I can run over to the village and get
it. I got a jug of my own, if you’d like a little snifter. How’s things in
the city?” and still rambling on with unanswered questions and
miscellaneous offers and club grounds information, he pottered to
the corner cupboard, and produced his jug, and poured out a glass
of whiskey.
“Thanks,” said Allison, and drank the liquor mechanically. He was
shuddering with the cold, but he had not noticed it until now. He
glanced around the room slowly and curiously, as if he had not seen
it before. “I think I’ll stay out here over night,” he told Peabody. “I’ll
occupy the office. If any one rings the phone, don’t answer.”
“Yes-sir,” replied Peabody. “Tell you what I’ll do, Mr. Allison. I’ll
muffle the bell. I guess I better light a fire in the office.”
“Eh? Yes. Oh yes. Yes, you might light a fire.”
“Get you a nice chicken maybe.”
“Eh? Yes. Oh yes. Yes.”
“Chicken or steak? Or maybe some chops.”
“Anything you like,” and Allison went towards the office. At the
door he turned. “You’ll understand, Peabody, that I have come here
to be quiet. I wish to be entirely alone, with certain important
matters which I must decide. If anybody should happen to drop in,
get rid of him. Do not say that I am here or have been here.”
“Yes-sir,” replied Peabody. “I know how it is that away. I want to
be by myself, often. Shall I make up the bed in the east room or the
west room? Seems to me the west room is a little pleasanter.”
Allison went into the office, and closed the door after him. It was
damp and chill in there, but he did not notice it. He sat down in the
swivel chair behind the flat top desk, and rested his chin in his
hands, and stared out of the window at the bleak and dreary
landscape. Just within his range of vision was a lonely little creek,
shadowed by a mournful drooping willow which had given the Club
its name, and in the wintry breeze it waved its long tendrils against
the leaden grey sky. Allison fixed his eyes on that oddly beckoning
tree, and strove to think. Old Peabody came pottering in, and with
many a clang and clatter builded a fire in the capacious Dutch stove;
with a longing glance at Allison, for he was starved with the hunger
of talk, he went out again.
At dusk he once more opened the door. Allison had not moved. He
still sat with his chin in his hands, looking out at that weirdly waving
willow. Old Peabody thought that he must be asleep, until he tiptoed
up at the side. Allison’s grey eyes, unblinking, were staring straight
ahead, with no expression in them. It was as if they had turned to
glass.
“Excuse me, Mr. Allison. Chicken or steak? I got ’em both, one for
supper and one for breakfast.”
Allison turned slowly, part way towards Peabody; not entirely.
“Chicken or steak?” repeated Peabody.
“Eh? Yes. Oh yes. Yes. The chicken.”
The fire had gone out. Peabody rebuilt it. He came in an hour
later, and studied the silent man at the desk for a long minute, and
then he decided an important question for himself. He brought in
Allison’s dinner on a tray, and set it on a corner of the desk.
“Shall I spread a cloth?”