Gladiator (28 page)

“Now?” Hugo echoed huskily.

“Now I understand. There is no better keeping for them than your own. I give them to you.”

“Me!”

“You, son. You must take them, and the burden must be yours. You have grown to manhood now and I am proud of you. More than proud. If I were not, I myself would destroy the books here on this bed. Matilda would bring them and I would watch them burn so that the danger would go with—” he cleared his throat—“my dream.”

“But—”

“You cannot deny me. It is my wish. You can see what it means. A world grown suddenly—as you are.”

“I, father—”

“
You have not avoided responsibility. You will not avoid this, the greatest of your responsibilities. Since the days when I made those notes—what days!—biology has made great strides. For a time I was anxious. For a time I thought that my research might be rediscovered. But it cannot be. Theory has swung in a different direction.” He smiled with inner amusement. “The opticians have decided that the microscope I made is impossible. The biochemists, moving through the secretions of such things as hippuric acid in the epithelial cells, to enzymes, to hormones, to chromosomes, have put a false construction on everything. It will take hundreds, thousands of years to see the light. The darkness is so intense and the error so plausible that they may never see again exactly as I saw. The fact of you, at best, may remain always no more than a theory. This is not vanity. My findings were a combination of accidents almost outside the bounds of mathematical probability. It is you who must bear the light.”

Hugo felt that now, indeed, circumstance had closed around him and left him without succour or recourse. He bowed his head. “I will do it, father.”

“Now I can die in peace—in joy.”

With an almost visible wrench Hugo brought himself back to his surroundings. “Nonsense, father. You'll probably get well.”

“No, son. I've studied the progress of this disease in the lower orders—when I saw it imminent. I shall die—not in pain, but in sleep. But I shall not be dead—because of you.” He held out his hand for Hugo.

Some time later the old professor fell asleep and Hugo tiptoed from the room. Food was sizzling downstairs in the kitchen, but he ignored it, going out into the sharp air by the front door. He hastened along the streets and soon came to the road that led up the mountain. He climbed rapidly, and when he dared, he discarded the tedious little steps of all mankind. He reached the side of the quarry where he had built the stone fort, and seated himself on a ledge that hung over it. Trees,
creepers,
and underbrush had grown over the place, but through the October-stripped barricade of their branches he could see a heap of stones that was his dolmen, on which the hieroglyph of him was inscribed.

Two tears scalded his cheeks; he trembled with the welter of his emotions. He had failed his father, failed his trust, failed the world; and in the abyss of that grief he could catch no sight of promise or hope. Having done his best, he had still done nothing, and it was necessary for him to lie to put the thoughts of a dying man to rest. The pity of that lie! The folly of the picture he had painted of himself—Hugo Danner the scourge of God, Hugo Danner the destroying angel, Hugo Danner the hero of a quick love-affair that turned brown and dead like a plucked flower, the sentimental soldier, the involuntary misanthrope.

“I must do it!” he whispered fiercely. The ruined stones echoed the sound of his voice with a remote demoniac jeer. Do what? What, strong man? What?

Chapter
XXI

N
OW
the winds keened from the mountains, and snow fell. Abednego Danner, the magnificent Abednego Danner, was carried to his last resting-place, the laboratory of nature herself. His wife and his son followed the bier; the dirge was intoned, the meaningless cadence of ritual was spoken to the cold ground; a ghostly obelisk was lifted up over his meagre remains. Hugo had a wish to go to the hills and roll down some gigantic chunk of living rock to mark that place until the coming of a glacier, but he forbore and followed all the dark conventions of disintegration.

The will was read and the bulk of Hugo's sorry gains was thrust back into his keeping. He went into the attic and opened the black trunk where the six small notebooks lay in oilpaper. He took them out and unwrapped them. The first two books were a maze of numbered experiments. In the third a more vigorous calligraphy, a quivering tracery of excitement, marked the repressed beginning of a new earth.

He bought a bag and some clothes and packed; the false contralto of his mother's hymns as she went about the house filled him with such despair that he left after the minimum interval allowed by filial decency. She was a grim old woman still, one to whom the coming of the kingdom to Africa was a passion, the polishing of the coal stove a duty, and the presence of her unfamiliar son a burden.

When he said good-by, he kissed her, which left her standing on the station platform looking at the train with a flat, uncomprehending expression. Hugo knew where he was going and why: he was on his way to Washington. The great crusade was to begin. He had no plans, only ideals, which are plans of a sort. He had told his father he was making the world a better
place,
and the idea had taken hold of him. He would grapple the world, his world, at its source; he would no longer attempt to rise from a lowly place; he would exert his power in the highest places; government, politics, law, were malleable to the force of one man.

Most of his illusion was gone. As he had said so glibly to his father, there were good men and corrupt in the important situations in the world; to the good he would lend his strength, to the corrupt he would exhibit his embattled antipathy. He would be not one impotent person seeking to dominate, but the agent of uplift. He would be what he perceived life had meant him to be: an instrument. He could not be a leader, but he could create a leader.

Such was his intention; he had seen a new way to reform the world, and if his inspiration was clouded occasionally with doubt, he disavowed the doubts as a Christian disavows temptation. This was to be his magnificent gesture; he closed his eyes to the inferences made by his past.

He never thought of himself as pathetic or quixotic; his ability to measure up to external requirements was infinite; his disappointment lay always (he thought) in his spirit and his intelligence. He went to Washington: the world was pivoting there.

His first few weeks were dull. He installed himself in a pleasant house and hired two servants. The use to which he was putting his funds compensated for their origin. It was men like Shayne who would suffer from his mission. And such a man came into view before very long.

Hugo interested himself in politics and the appearance of politics. He read the
Congressional Record
, he talked with everyone he met, he went daily to the Capitol and listened to the amazing pattern of harangue from the lips of innumerable statesmen. In looking for a cause his eye fell naturally on the problem of disarmament. Hugo saw at once that it was a great cause and that it was bogged in the greed of individuals. It is not difficult to become politically partisan in the Capitol of any
nation.
It was patent to Hugo that disarmament meant a removal of the chance for war; Hugo hated war. He moved hither and thither, making friends, learning, entertaining, never exposing his plan—which his new friends thought to be lobbying for some impending legislation.

He picked out an individual readily enough. Some of the men he had come to know were in the Senate, others in the House of Representatives, others were diplomats, newspaper reporters, attachés. Each alliance had been cemented with care and purpose. His knowledge of an enemy came by whisperings, by hints, by plain statements.

Congressman Hatten, who argued so eloquently for laying down arms and picking up the cause of humanity, was a guest of Hugo's.

“Danner,” he said, after a third highball, “you're a sensible chap. But you don't quite get us. I'm fighting for disarmament—”

“And making a grand fight—”

The Congressman waved his hand. “Sure. That's what I mean. You really want this thing for itself. But, between you and me, I don't give a rap about ships and guns. My district is a farm district. We aren't interested in paying millions in taxes to the bosses and owners in a coal and iron community. So I'm against it. Dead against it—with my constituency behind me. Nobody really wants to spend the money except the shipbuilders and steel men. Maybe they don't, theoretically. But the money in it is too big. That's why I fight.”

“And your speeches?”

“Pap, Danner, pure pap. Even the yokels in my home towns realize that.”

“It doesn't seem like pap to me.”

“That's politics. In a way it isn't. Two boys I was fond of are lying over there in France. I don't want to make any more shells. But I have to think of something else first. If I came from some other district, the case would be reversed. I'd like to change the tariff. But the industrials oppose me in that. So
we
compromise. Or we don't. I think I could put across a decent arms-limitation bill right now, for example, if I could get Willard Melcher out of town for a month.”

“Melcher?”

“You know him, of course—at least, who he is. He spends the steel money here in Washington—to keep the building program going on. Simple thing to do. The Navy helps him. Tell the public about the Japanese menace, the English menace, all the other menaces, and the public coughs up for bigger guns and better ships. Run 'em till they rust and nobody ever really knows what good they could do.”

“And Melcher does that?”

The Congressman chuckled. “His pay-roll would make your eyes bulge. But you can't touch him.”

Hugo nodded thoughtfully. “Don't you think anyone around here works purely for an idea?”

“How's that? Oh—I understand. Sure. The cranks!” And his laughter ended the discussion.

Hugo began. He walked up the brick steps of Melcher's residence and pulled the glittering brass knob. A servant came to the door.

“Mr. Danner to see Mr. Melcher. Just a moment.”

A wait in the hall. The servant returned. “Sorry, but he's not in.”

Hugo's mouth was firm. “Please tell him that I saw him come in.”

“I'm sorry, sir, but he is going right out.”

“Tell him—that he will see me.”

The servant raised his voice. “Harry!” A heavy person with a flattened nose and cauliflower ears stepped into the hall. “This gentleman wishes to see Mr. Melcher, and Mr. Melcher is not in—to him. Take care of him, Harry.” The servant withdrew.

“Run along, fellow.”

Hugo smiled. “Mr. Melcher keeps a bouncer?”

An evil light flickered in the other's eyes. “Yeah, fellow. And I came up from the Pennsy mines. I'm a tough guy, so beat it.”

“
Not so tough your ears and nose aren't a sight,” Hugo said lightly.

The man advanced. His voice was throaty. “Git!”

“You go to the devil. I came here to see Melcher and I'm going to see him.”

“Yeah?”

The tough one drew back his fist, but he never understood afterwards what had taken place. He came to in the kitchen an hour later. Mr. Melcher heard him rumble to the floor and emerged from the library. He was a huge man, bigger than his bouncer; his face was hard and sinister and it lighted with an unpleasant smile when he saw the unconscious thug and measured the size of Hugo. “Pulled a fast one on Harry, eh?”

“I came to see you, Melcher.”

“Well, might as well come in now. I worked up from the mines myself, and I'm a hard egg. If you got funny with me, you'd get killed. Wha' daya want?”

Hugo sat down in a leather chair and lit a cigarette. He was comparatively without emotion. This was his appointed task and he would make short shrift of it. “I came here, Melcher,” he began, “to talk about your part in the arms conferences. It happens that I disagree with you and your propaganda. It happens that I have a method of enforcing my opinion. Disarmament is a great thing for the world, and putting the idea across is the first step toward even bigger things. I know the relative truths of what you say about America's peril and what you get from saying it. Am I clear?”

Melcher had reddened. He nodded. “Perfectly.”

“I have nothing to add. Get out of town.”

Melcher's eyes narrowed. “Do you really believe that sending me out of town would do any good? Do you have the conceit to think that one nutty shrimp like you can buck the will and ideas of millions of people?”

Hugo did not permit his convictions to be shaken. “There happen to be extenuating circumstances, Melcher.”

“
Really? You surprise me.” The broad sarcasm was shaken like a weapon. “And do you honestly think you could chase me—me—out of here?”

“I am sure of it.”

“How?”

Hugo extinguished his cigarette. “I happen to be more than a man. I am—” he hesitated, seeking words—“let us say, a devil, or an angel, or a scourge. I detest you and what you stand for. If you do not leave—I can ruin your house and destroy you. And I will.” He finished his words almost gently.

Melcher appeared to hesitate. “All right. I'll go. Immediately. This afternoon.”

Hugo was astonished. “You will go?”

“I promise. Good afternoon, Mr. Danner.”

Hugo rose and walked toward the door. He was seething with surprise and suspicion. Had he actually intimidated Melcher so easily? His hand touched the knob. At that instant Melcher hit him on the head with a chair. It broke in pieces. Hugo turned around slowly.

“I understand. You mistook me for a dangerous lunatic. I was puzzled for a moment. Now—”

Melcher's jaw sagged in amazement when Hugo did not fall. An instant later he threw himself forward, arms out, head drawn between his shoulders. With one hand Hugo imprisoned his wrists. He lifted Melcher from the floor and shook him. “I meant it, Melcher. And I will give you a sign. Rotten politics, graft, bad government, are doomed.” Melcher watched with staring eyes while Hugo, with his free hand, rapidly demolished the room. He picked up the great desk and smashed it, he tore the stone mantelpiece from its roots; he kicked the fireplace apart; he burst a hole in the brick wall—dragging the bulk of a man behind him as he moved. “Remember that, Melcher. No one else on earth is like me—and I will get you if you fail to stop. I'll come for you if you squeal about this—and I leave it to you to imagine what will happen.”