The Rise of Ransom City (41 page)

It was the first time in my life I had ever traveled in a motor-car. The windows of this conveyance were made of dark glass. The interior was shadow and murk and seats of a black substance that was unpleasantly soft and uncomfortably hard, both at the same time. I was watched from across the shadows by the faces of Mr. Shelby, attorney at law, and Mr. Gates, officer of the Baxter Detective Agency. Shelby’s face was round and pink and moist, like a new-hatched chick, or a tub of ointment. Gates was brown and stubbled and hard. He wore a blue blazer with a military collar, brass studded. I could not make out the meaning of his insignia. I could not make out the operations of the motor-car, either. You will understand that my curiosity was elsewhere. I can report that there was a bad smell and a nauseous vibration, and that the driver operated his horn so often to clear the streets of donkeys and carts and small boys that it was like one long continuous note of alarm, somehow perpetually rising in pitch and volume.

I was removed from the motor-car and led across an expanse of concrete in the shadow of Mr. Baxter’s Tower and through a servant’s entrance into a long corridor of smooth stone and electric-light that ended in a row of a dozen or maybe more ornate and fabulous brass doors, each of them numbered.

This was also the first occasion on which I rode in an elevator.

Of course it was no surprise that Mr. Baxter’s Tower should be so equipped. As everyone well knows, Mr. Alfred Baxter made his first fortune with the elevator, at the age of no more than twenty-five. The ingenious invention had made possible the tall buildings of Jasper and Gibson and Juniper, an explosion of commerce— what he called in his
Autobiography,
“the conquest of the sky.”

We took the last elevator. Inside it was made of red leather and polished wood and gold and brass. A hot electric-light hung from the ceiling. Its motion was as smooth and silent as the car’s had been herky-jerky.

I guessed that we were in Mr. Baxter’s private elevator, because the thing stopped nowhere between the ground and the highest floor of the building. I could not say how many times over the years I had day-dreamed about riding that elevator! But I had never day-dreamed about Mr. Shelby, or Mr. Gates, or Mr. Gates’s two ill-favored associates, who stood with their hands on their nightsticks and did not bother to disguise their eagerness to beat me.

Adela had been left behind at the Theater. I was both pleased and sorry that she was not with me. So had Mr. Quantrill. I did not miss him at all.

There was a sensation in my head and feet as we ascended that I cannot describe to anyone who has not had occasion to ride in an elevator.

Mr. Gates lit a cigarette and Mr. Shelby shook his head in disapproval.

The doors opened and Mr. Gates shoved me forward.

How shall I describe Mr. Alfred P. Baxter? First I’ll say that he existed, and that by itself was something of a surprise, because I had sometimes suspected that he was nothing but a name, with no body attached. It was not much of a body but it was not nothing.

You saw the room first, not the man. It was a wide and high-ceilinged room with curtains on the windows and bookshelves on the walls and a number of writing-desks, on one of which sat a typewriter of unusual size. On another sat what I later discovered was a telegraph-machine. Electric-light spilled from a corner across a floor of gray tiles and long black shadows. Two young men in white shirts stood in another two corners, both fairly quivering with eagerness to be useful. I knew their type and quickly disregarded them. In the last corner of the room a man in a black suit with close-cropped black hair stood beside a leather chair. At first I thought
he
was Mr. Baxter, but of course he was many years too young. Mr. Alfred P. Baxter could not have been less than eighty years old.

The old man himself occupied the leather chair. When he moved I started in surprise, and I felt Detective Gates stiffen.

Mr. Baxter’s thin arm reached from beneath a blanket— and not to beckon me forward or acknowledge my presence in any way, but only to pull closer the mouthpiece of a small metal tank, from which he inhaled or imbibed something or other. Then he coughed.

The man in the black suit beside him said, “Ransom’s here.”

It was unmistakably the accent of an Officer of the Line.

Mr. Baxter’s eyebrows twitched.

Gates shoved me forward.

“Ransom,” Mr. Baxter said. He was almost too quiet to hear. “Ransom.”

“The man who says he built a free-energy process, Mr. Baxter,” Shelby explained. “The man who stole from—”

“Yes, yes. I know, I know who he is. Well, let’s look at you, then, let’s see you, thief.”

“I am not a thief.”

“Course you are, son, course you are. This thing of yours is mine, I have a piece of paper says so— isn’t that right, Shelby? Eh, Watt?”

Shelby murmured obsequious assent. The Linesman nodded, never taking his eyes off me. I took it that he was Watt.

“I will not tell you anything about John Creedmoor,” I said, “Or Liv, or anything— I do not know where they are, except for what I read in the newspapers, same as you. I—”

“Too late for that, son. Eh, Watt? Too late. Cat’s out of the bag, barn door’s open. That’s business. Spilt milk. In business you don’t cry over it, you hit back harder. You compete. That’s what you’re here for, son.”

“I am a free man, Mr. Baxter, and the Process is mine. I can do what I like where I like. Once upon a time I dreamed of working with you— no more. You may have money but I have truth. I intend to stand on my rights— I will litigate if I must.”

Gates laughed. Nobody else laughed until Mr. Baxter laughed, after which everyone in the room except the Linesman followed suit.

Shelby stopped laughing and pretended obsequiously to wipe tears of laughter from his eyes.

“Let us be
clear
, Mr. Ransom,” Shelby said. “Who did or did
not
make the Apparatus is beside the point, should this come to a court of law. At the time that you— ah—acquired possession of the device, you were resident in the town of East— ah—Conlan, were you not? And you were I believe
indebted
, you and your family, to the management of that town, which is to say a debt that was acquired by the NLC, which of course is the property of the Trust; and accordingly, should the matter of
authorship
be contested, you will find that
ownership
of all such works belongs incontestably to the Trust; indeed by absconding from Conlan with the debt un-paid you have inflicted a very present
injury
upon the Trust, which . . .”

Mr. Baxter reached for the mouthpiece again while Shelby talked and he drew in a deep breath from it. His eyes did not leave me.

“That is a lie,” I said. That was a feeble answer, I know. What Shelby said was not a lie. It was unfair and absurd but it was not a lie.

Baxter exhaled. “Not a question of truth, son. All a question of power. We have it, you don’t. Future is ours and will stay ours. Better that way for everybody.”

“We? Ours? Mr. Baxter, I admired you for so long— ever since I was a boy— the elevator— the ammonia-ice machine— the cash-register— all of it— freedom, fortune, fame— well, I always imagined one day I’d come here and you’d see the greatness of the Ransom Process and together we’d— laugh if you must, sir— laugh away— but how could you work for this man— why, when
did
you sell yourself to the Line, Mr. Baxter—?”