Chapter 5 #2
Dyer, a Wall Street marauder whose ebullient spirits and street fighter tactics masked a shrewd intelligence, was the kind of man who wanted everyone to grovel at his feet.
“I majored in civil engineering and learned everything in two years that I possibly could. After outdistancing my professors on the subject, and reading every book in West Point’s library, I figured it was time to strike out on my own and apply what I had learned to real world practice.
I have learned it is better to walk a thousand miles than to read a thousand books. ”
Elizabeth Spencer twirled her wine glass and then took another sip. Her eyes narrowed on him. “Mr. Rourke, tell me other than roping, what other talent do you possess?”
Like a wrangley bobcat caught in a trap, she attacked him for being in her home. He’d handle her. He looked forward to the battle. “Depends on what you are looking for,” he dared.
Elizabeth glared at him. “Are we having a conversation, Mr. Rourke? About your other talent, your excellent memory. For instance, can you recall anything from the New York Tribune?”
“Today’s edition? Yesterdays? Or last week’s?”
“You cannot possibly purport to remember all of that.”
He shrugged.
“Bring me today’s paper,” Elizabeth ordered one of the servants, wishing to call him out on his chicanery for all the eyes at the table to witness. Thumbing through the paper, she said, “Tell me about the main story at the top of column three on page two.”
Zachary stared above at the twelve-foot square stained-glass skylight that restrained the heavens while paging through the paper in his mind.
“Congress first session. Regular report of proceedings, Belknap’s impeachment begun—he pleads that he is a private citizen and hence cannot be impeached, Kilbourn’s case in the House–pinch backs salary. Do you wish me to go on?
He waited while she scanned the paper. “Extraordinary. Everything you quoted is as it is written.”
“And for his next con, he’ll tell us our futures,” Dyer sniggered, and like a chorus of hyenas everyone laughed at his patronizing joke.
Without hesitation, Zachary said to Elizabeth, “I remember everything—in detail.” He liked the fifty shades of pink that rushed to her face.
Elizabeth slapped the paper down on the table. “I would hope a man’s word is his honor?”
She was referring to his promise. “A man without nobility to his word has no character.”
Dyer coughed. “The ideals of the unfortunate.”
“Chen, my friend, once told me,” Zachary began, refusing to be diminished by Dyer, “‘Lie to a liar for that is his coin, steal from the thief for that is effortless, lay a trap for the trickster for that is easy, too, but beware of the honest man.”’
Elizabeth dropped her linen napkin on the floor.
He bent his head to retrieve the item at the same time she did.
Beneath the shelter of the table, their hands touched.
His closed over hers. Soft. Trembling. She pulled back, staring up at him with storm cloud eyes that threatened rain and whispered, “You won’t—”
His heart thumped hard in his chest. Her daughter was at risk. He’d keep her secret. “To my grave.”
Satisfied with his response, she straightened with a sudden buoyancy. Her happiness gave him surprise. He liked it. He liked it a lot.
She thumbed through the paper, and with a sly expression said, “I’ll bet you two opera tickets in the Spencer box that you can’t tell me what is on page seven halfway down the third column.”
Her mother dropped her fork on her plate where it clanged. “Elizabeth!”
Elizabeth panned a horrified expression, dabbing her lips with her napkin. “Oh, dear. I’ve broken the cult of domesticity by gambling.”
“Let her have her day,” Dyer said, supporting her.
All eyes around the table waited expectantly, most relishing Zachary’s coming failure.
Too bad to disappoint. Like a conjurer doing a trick, he stared over a large sideboard where Frederic Church’s painting of Near Damascus hung.
He paged through the paper in his mind, stopping on page seven, third column, halfway down.
“The markets. Total receipts of produce per the North River, vessels, and railroads. Ashes twenty-five. Beeswax, twenty-five. Cotton bales, three thousand five hundred and five, copper barrels, thirty-two, flour, sixteen thousand two hundred and eighty-three barrels, barley, one thousand nine hundred and sixty bushels. I don’t want to bore anyone.
The rest of the page is dedicated to the money market, livestock market, New York state domestic markets, notices to bondholders, the annual meeting of stockholders of the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas railway, and other miscellaneous banking and housing announcements. Satisfied?”
She sat back in awe of him. “Extraordinary. Everything you quoted is as it is written.”
He’d presented a coup de gras and earned her laughter. How he liked the sound of summer rain and birdsong, too.
“I can’t find any fault with you, Mr. Rourke.”
“A cheap parlor trick by a cowboy.” Alva flicked her eyes over her inferior.
Elizabeth leaned over and whispered to him again, her scent entwining him. Lavender. “Mother wears her propriety like thorns. Aloofness comes easy as she mastered it years ago.”
“Your two brothers fought for the South?” harangued Dyer, not to be forgotten.
The older man sought to denigrate Zachary’s family as participants on the other side of the war. “Yes, sir. General John Daniel Rourke and Colonel Ryan Rourke. My brother, Colonel Lucas Rourke, fought for the North and was a good friend of the late President Lincoln.” Zachary could drop names, too.
“And you?” Dyer probed.
Zach idled his fork, and then scrutinized Dyer. “My family knew my opinion on the war. I wanted nothing to do with it, so I headed west.”
“What did you do out West, Mr. Rourke?” Louise, Elizabeth’s sister, said in a purring voice. He had met the pinched-face woman in the receiving line. Spite dripped from her. “Well? Do not keep us in suspense. Did you ride in an elegant coach from place to place?”
Louise did not hold a candle to her older sister and confirmed her birth at the top of the brainless tree. “I explored, lived off the land. Saw the Mississippi, the vast plains, the Grand Canyon. The Rockies.”
“Did you ride with Jessie James’ gang?” Louise persisted, compelling Zachary to think she had fallen from the top of the brainless tree, hitting every branch on the way down.
“You must have seen Indians,” Elizabeth said.
“Plenty. Some skirmishes as well, especially when I was working on the railroads.”
“You worked on the railroads?” asked Edward Spencer, the man who spent his time lunching with kings or emperors or buying Raphaels.
“Yes, sir. I was a manager with the Union Pacific, saw it to the end. Was there to see the golden stake hammered in at Promontory Point.”
“Then you know something about railroads?” Spencer’s fierce intolerant eyes were set just close enough to suggest rigid and ruthless discipline. Yet those same eyes grew warm when they fell on Elizabeth.
Zachary raised a brow. Edward Spencer, the procurer of thousands of miles of track, was a driven, meticulously groomed man of few words and clever instincts. “If I may, I have some suggestions during this economic downturn.”
Alva glowered. “What could a cowboy possibly share with a man who knows everything about railroads?”
He angled his head. “Plenty, Ma’am.”
“Let the man talk, Alva. People on the lines have real experience that rarely gets to the man at the top. Go ahead, young man,” said Spencer.
Like giving advice to the Mephistopheles of the banking world.
“As you know, the railroads have created a national mass market by providing cheap, quick, all-weather, long-distance transport for enormous quantities of freight. A lot of the country’s wilderness has been carved up, galvanizing its industrial imagination, stimulating technological innovation, spurring production of coal, iron, and steel. ”
Dyer waved a dismissive hand. “We know all that.”
“Unfortunately, the rail lines crossing the country have been built by competing companies in disconnected patches with no standard track gauge and no national plan. Each company runs its own cars on its own tracks, which means that passengers must change trains—and carloads of freight must be unpacked and reloaded at each new stretch of road. This takes hours. Time is money.”
Edward Spencer nodded. “It is a problem.”
“Also, longer trains loaded full and running fast can be operated far more cheaply and efficiently than small ones.
Think economies of scale: it cost less per unit to make or carry a lot of something than a little.
A banker might see the economic sense to lower operating costs so the rail lines can earn enough money to service its debt.
“There is also the variable of the unfinished line intended to run from Lake Superior to Puget Sound. It’s bankrupt. You could slowly reorganize and appeal to bondholders. The rail line uncompleted is wholly unremunerative. But completed, it becomes one of the great highways of the nation.”
“You are very astute,” said Elizabeth’s father. “I could offer you a job–”
“I’m flattered sir, but I’m here for financing of an invention I’ve made as introduced by Shawn Fitzgerald. I was hoping after dinner we could convene, and I could share with you my ideas.”
“Harrumph,” snorted Isaac Havemeyer, taking out his pocket watch and snapping it open. “I wouldn’t give it a bit of notice. Wolves don’t lose sleep over the opinion of sheep.”
The sugar baron begged to showcase himself as prominent. Zachary inclined his head. “Aristotle.”
“Who?” said the sugar baron.
Zachary said nothing. He never underestimated the power of stupid people in large groups.
Elizabeth’s eyes sparkled. “Mr. Havemeyer, you must know you have paraphrased Aristotle’s classic work, Politics, where he tells the story of Thrasybulus, the seventh century BC tyrant who asked his fellow oppressor, Periander of Corinth how he should govern his people.
To demonstrate, Periander lopped off the heads of poppies. ”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” demanded the sugar baron, whose dysfunction scattered to impossible higher thoughts. Did the man pout by being outwitted by a woman?
“Good God,” ranted Alva. “Elizabeth, you give me a headache with all that learning. Why your father allowed you to have a college education is beyond me.”
Guests cleared their throats, some shifted awkwardly. In the social world, an educated woman was an undesirable quality.
Zachary tamped down a grin. Elizabeth was a cougar. She’d have the sugar baron for her breakfast.
Undeterred by her mother’s remark, Elizabeth continued. “Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Rourke, that Thrasybulus understood that it was necessary to get rid of eminent citizens.”
“I agree, Miss Spencer. For those who position their heads above the parapet to get it lopped off.”
At the head of the table a straight-backed servant intoned, “The next course is roast saddle of mutton and spring chicken.”
Elizabeth nodded to the servant who placed her dish in front of her, and then pinned her gaze on Havemeyer. “Chicken. How appropriate.”
With his cheeks blazing from the innuendo, the sugar baron clamped his mouth shut. Elizabeth had axed the sugar baron off the matrimonial list. Clever girl.
With a conspiratorial gleam, she smiled at Zachary. It was the kind of smile that wove spells and caused men to run upon hot coals.
“I’d say that we should give Mr. Rourke a chance, don’t you agree, Father? Rawlins, will you finance him for me?”
Elizabeth Spencer had spoken for him? Zach couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d asked him how to breed archangels.
“I’ll give it some thought,” said Dyer, his tone belying the glimmer of warmth and yearning in his eyes as he studied her. Zachary gritted his teeth. His immediate contempt of Rawlins Dyer filled him with loathing.