Walker of the Secret Service/Chapter 12
XII. The Menace
We never could persuade Walker to discuss his adventures in enforcing the prohibition Amendment: perhaps because the methods of the service were in use and could not be revealed.
But one night, when we pressed him, he took the proofs of a magazine story out of a locked file and gave them to us.
“Here,” he said, “is the great peril to the Amendment. We had to suppress the whole magazine issue to get this story out. Of course the elements in this story are fictitious, but on any day they may become an appalling reality.”
We read the story. And here it is:
“Five Millions is a Big Sum of Money.”
•••••
“Sure, it’s a big sum of money. But I’m going to do this thing up right! You heard me wishin’ the other day that I could double cross the bunch of cranks that’s a-runnin’ this country. Well, I’ve done stopped wishin’. I’m goin’ to do something to double-cross ’em. You hear what I say, Stetman! I’m a-goin’ to offer five millions of dollars to any chemist who can find the active principle in alcohol!”
The attorney, tall, angular, incisive, did not move.
Arnbush pounded on the table with his fat clenched hand.
“The rest of the bunch can keep on wishin’ and startin’ little lawsuits. I’m goin’ after this thing good and proper.”
He was a stout, heavy man, advanced in life. His hair was white and thick, his eyes gray. His manner was heavy and determined, like that of one accustomed to crush out, by superior mass, opposition before him. One thought of the steam roller as the man’s ideal of an attacking engine.
It was night. The two were at a table in the corner of the big Waldorf dining room that looks out on Fifth Avenue. It was beyond the hour at which even the late arrival dined. It was drawing on toward midnight. A less known or a less valuable guest would hardly have kept a place in the big dining room at this hour. An old waiter hung about, evidently attached by impressive gratuities to this guest; peculiar, but with an open and enormous purse to sustain it.
The man was accustomed to obtaining what he wanted, and at any cost in money. Avarice was not a motive in the man. The motive in him, deep-seated and dominant, was power. Money was a jinn to be commanded, to fetch and carry and break open as he wished.
Arnbush and the attorney, Stetman, sat at the table after the fragments of the dinner had been removed. They were at the end of days of innumerable meetings, conferences, and legal discussions with the owners and lawyers of a business now threatened with destruction.
The great distiller chewed an unlighted cigar.
The lawyer smoked a cigarette, flicking the ashes, with care and precision, into a metal tray on the table beside his arm.
He was an able man in his profession: fertile in resources, accurate, but with a large daring that fitted him for adventuring beyond the conceptions of little counselors in the law. And he was not too elevated in his own esteem to disregard any notion of his client, however bizarre it might appear in its raw suggestion.
The distiller’s big hand was thumping on the table.
“You hear what I say, Stetman! I’m goin’ to land this bunch of cranks! On the day you discover the active principle in alcohol they’re done! There’s nothin’ to it, they’re done! The whole country will get drunk and stay drunk! God Almighty couldn’t stop it when you get the kick-drop out of the bottle of water that’s in a quart of alcohol.
“It’ll take an army of agents to stop the smuggling of liquor as it is; how will they stop it if a man can carry the punch of a barrel of whisky in an ounce bottle?”
Ambush’s voice thickened with an indignant energy.
“And I’m a-goin’ to put up the money to get it. I’m a-goin’ to put up five millions of dollars!
“You hear what I say, Stetman! You cut out the lawsuits. This country’s goin’ to hell, an’ I’m goin’ to give it a shove along.”
He extended his big hand, with a determined gesture, across the table.
“You go down to your office in the morning and write a codicil, or whatever you call it, to my will offering five millions of dollars to any chemist who discovers the active principle in alcohol.”
He flung out his fat fingers.
“No ifs an’ ands, Stetman, you do what I tell you!”
The lawyer very carefully removed the ashes from his cigarette. “I shall have to think about that a little,” he said.
“I’ve already done the thinkin’,” cried the distiller. “You do what I tell you!”
The explosion of his client did not disturb the lawyer. He was accustomed to this energy; and the magnitude of his fees compensated for the manner.
“It is not your intent,” he said, “that I shall wish to consider; it is the form that it might take. A bald offer would hardly do. We shall have to stage the thing in some scientific purpose; perhaps a foundation of some sort would be required with your intention attached as a rider.”
He paused and fingered the cigarette.
“It will be a delicate thing to handle, if one would not have the first Congress emasculate it. It may be necessary to put this fund under some other government, and to include some benefit to the arts or to the public welfare.”
He paused again and one could see that he traveled in his mind, swiftly like a scouting plane, above the field of the idea. The unusual features of the thing and the obvious difficulties in the way did not drive him in upon the reply: “It cannot be done.”
This was an answer he avoided. It was the secret of the man’s career. To find a way, he took in every case, to be the purpose of his employment; and he climbed into a fortune on it. He held Arnbush and others of his kind because they were never met with that reply. He found a way in some sort of fashion.
Arnbush was quieted by this reflection.
“Sure!” he said. “That’s what I pay you for, Stetman. You fix the thing so it’ll hold water.”
The lawyer continued, as though he were suggesting devices to himself:
“It might be advisable to indicate the existence of this offer to the leading chemists in the country. There is Lang and Neinsoul, just beyond us here on Park Avenue. No better man in America than Lang; fine type of Swiss. I don’t know why he holds on to the German name in the firm, except that it is one of the most celebrated firm names in the world. … Great genius, Neinsoul; no doubt about it—incredible things to his name. I suppose Lang feels that the firm name is a sort of trade-mark.”
The lawyer paused.
“I might see Lang on the way down—and sound him a bit; he’s a late owl, usually in Keator’s after midnight. … I’d like to know what a first-class chemist like Lang would think about the possibilities of a discovery of this sort. … Surely somebody has undertaken it. There must be an active principle, as you say, in alcohol—some chemical element upon which it depends for its effect. And it might be possible to separate that from the other medium. It may be, in fact, powerful element, of which there are only slight traces in the alcohol of commercial liquors.”
The big distiller thrust himself forward in his chair.
“Sure, Stetman !” he said. “Ain’t our chemists been saying that all along? And ain’t they been huntin’ it?… But they’re too little for the job! Sure, there’s something in alcohol that gives it the punch.”
“Well,” the lawyer replied, “Lang is a pretty big man. … I’ll see you in the morning.”
He rose. Arnbush went out with him into the corridor and, when the lawyer had gone, he took the elevator to his room.
But Arnbush did not go at once to bed. He sat down by the window, looking out on the avenue and the passing vehicles, and through the cañons and vistas of the city, blue in the starlit night.
He was bitter and determined.
The great business of which he was the leading spirit had been ruined. He saw clearly that this was the end. He had a larger vision and a sounder judgment than his associates. Their desperate legal writhings almost amused him. They were plainly useless.
Revenge was the only consolation open.
He had an immense fortune, an incredible fortune; well, he would use a portion of it to nullify the victory of his enemies. He would sow their hopes with ruin, such ruin as the half-mad creatures never imagined. They could regulate and limit the use of commercial liquor, but the thing he would discover they could neither control nor regulate. Like Samson he would lay hold of the pillars of the house and all should go down to ruin with him. He would offer a sum so great that the ablest chemists of the world would be in his service. Five millions of dollars should go into this discomfiture of his enemies.
He sat a long time before the window; finally a sound disturbed him. The telephone bell was ringing. He rose and went over to it. The voice speaking seemed far away, and the man thought it was a long-distance call from some remote point.
“This is Neinsoul,” the voice said. “Come to our laboratory on Park Avenue; I think we have discovered the thing you are looking for.”
It was a moment before Arnbush realized the message. Evidently Stetman had seen his man. And the chemists were keen; their interest could not wait. Well, five millions was a huge sum. They might very well fear that a cooler mood in the rich distiller would reduce the offer. But the hour was late, and Arnbush replied with some urgency upon the point.
The thin, distant voice was insistent.
“I shall not be here in the morning; you must come to-night.”
This repeated answer seemed final and decisive. In the course of an ordinary affair Arnbush would have ordered the speaker to remain and await his arrival in the morning. But the voice seemed one not easily to be ordered. And Arnbush was still hot with the moving impulses of his affair. There was no mood for sleep on him, although the night was advanced. And he determined to go. He got his coat and hat and descended into the street.
A few minutes brought him to the number.
The building, gaunt with its lightless windows, was abandoned. But the door to the dark entrance opened as he approached.
“We shall have to walk up,” a voice said. “It is not far.”
Arnbush could not see the man; but he recognized the voice, and he went in. It seemed a long journey up the stairs. Finally they came into a room lighted dimly, above a table, with a gas jet.
The room was fitted with all the devices of a chemist’s trade; there was the faint, pungent odor of such a place about it. Two tall windows looked out above the city, and there was a chair and a stool beside the table.
The chemist was now visible to Arnbush: a tall, stooped figure in a sort of smock; a big, nearly naked head, bulging above the brows and fringed with straw-colored hair; a pasty face, livid and unhealthy; and thick, myopic glasses that reduced the eyes behind them.
The chemist took the stool behind the table and indicated the chair before it for his guest.
Arnbush was fatigued with the long climb, and he at once sat down.
The chemist came directly to the point; he made no disquisition on his wealthy patron, the hour, or the affair.
“I have discovered the thing you are seeking,” he said. “I will show it to you.”
He took a little glass tube from a rack before him and held it under the light. It was partly filled with a thick, viscous, golden-colored stuff.
“That is circine,” he said. “It is the element of virtue in all distillations. In alcohol,” he continued, “one finds it imperfectly produced. This sample I am showing you is pure.”
He rose, got a glass, filled it halfway with water from a spigot, added a drop of the fluid from the tube and handed it to Arnbush.
“Drink that,” he said.
The golden-colored essence had disappeared completely into the water, making a rich amber liquid, and the man thought that he was about to taste something peculiar or unpleasant.
He got the staggering shake-up of his life.
At the first touch of the liquid to his tongue, the man paused, removed the glass, and sat back in his chair, looking in wonder at the chemist.
He had tasted something heavenly! The aroma of a soft, aged, velvety liquor was in his mouth; a liquor beyond the product of any human distillation; the liquor that one has dreamed of, forgotten in some ancient cask, bedded down in cobwebs in a warehouse, or hidden by one’s father through a lifetime.
The man was too shaken to be coherent. He began to stutter.
The chemist was undisturbed.
“Drink it,” he said.
Arnbush leaned over and drank off the fluid. And at once every sensation in his body changed; a warm glow extended to his fingers; there was soft, insidious stimulation, and the fatigue of his exertions vanished.
And there was more than this.
The ego in the man was elevated. It took on dominance and majesty; bothered and hectored, heretofore, it was now a king. And the spirit of the man, rising as though newly born in some womb of the sun, realized that this was the thing that every human creature tasting of liquors eternally longed for. It was the thing for which the world had been going to alcohol to seek—the supreme, moving motive of all drunkenness! It released, and strengthened, and ennobled that thing within the human body which every man thinks of as himself.
Or at least it seemed like that to Arnbush.
And there was with this heavenly taste of liquor the alluring enchantment of a drug. The world softened and became a place of pleasure, but it was the pleasure of a mental dominance, and it was the softness of a plastic kingdom. The individuality in the man was glorified.
What alcohol promised, this amazing fluid gave!
Arnbush put down the empty glass, and regarded the chemist, across the table, with a growing wonder.
“You have found it!” he said.
It was the comment of one who finds a treasure; the comment of one who, after a doubtful search, looks down on a heap of gold-pieces gleaming under the broken lid-boards of a chest.
“You have found it!”
It was the supreme expression of a victory immense and final. He had now within his hand the ruin of his enemies. And the stimulated ego in the man exulted. He would destroy their victory over him beyond the wildest conceptions of disaster. They were now trapped and huddled, and the weapon was in his hand.
His revenge stood out a shining figure before his face!
No need now for the trust fund in a death testament. He should live to see it. And he put the eager query, foremost in his mind.
“Is it difficult to manufacture?”
The chemist had been sitting with his elbow on the table, his jaw bedded in the fork of his hand, his pale eyes behind the myopic lenses on Arnbush.
It was a strange reflective watching, as of one who was beyond the common motives of a normal life; as of one who sat at a window, before a world that it no longer interested him to enter, or out of which he had been ejected—and who, being thus, had found a medium for vicarious influence.
He replied without a change in his peculiar posture.
“It is the widest distributed of all known elements,” he said, “and the easiest to isolate. … Anybody can make it and the material is before every door. I bid you observe how simple the process is.”
He removed his hand, drew forth a drawer in the table and took out a candle, an ordinary clay pipe and some green, little seed. He packed the seed into the pipe bowl with his thumb and set it above the flame.
Arnbush looked on, astonished.
The temperature of the night had changed. A faint premonition of the morning was on the way. There was a suggestion of chill entering through the window. And there was silence.
The dim flame of the gas jet overhead and the candle on the table threw a flickering arc of light about the pale hand, the clay pipe with its bowl of seed sitting in the flame, and the big, nearly naked, head extended toward them.
And while the distiller watched, there appeared, at the mouth end of the pipe stem, a drop of green. It lengthened and widened slowly until it hung there like a pear-shaped emerald.
The chemist removed the pipe from the flame of the candle.
“That is circine,” he said. “It is present in all vegetable life, especially in the seed. Any of the plants of the Ambrosia family are rich in it. I have used here the common green seed of the ragweed and a little heat.
“But I bid you mark that in this form the circine is not free. It is locked up in the molecule. If you tasted this drop of green, it would be bitter and have no effect. The circine is, as I have said, cased off in the molecule. It must be freed to have any virtue.”
He rose, got a broken-handled cup and from a plate beside it a pinch of substance that looked like a gray mold, pulverized it between his fingers, placed it in the cup, and added the drop of green liquid on the pipe stem.
He warmed the cup above the candle, and presently, when he had finished, handed it to Arnbush.
Within lay a globule of the golden fluid!
“Here,” he said, “we have the circine free. Taste it.”
He took the cup and added a little water.
The distiller touched it to his lips, and with a great effort of the will replaced it on the table. In his mouth was, again, the taste of that rich, heavenly liquor, seasoned, an age long, in some hidden cask.
The chemist went back to his stool.
“The substance I have added to the drop of green is a fungus culture. Among the innumerable varieties of fungi there is, alone, one culture which has the power to destroy the shell about the molecule and set the incased circine free. And as it happens, this fungus is of almost universal distribution; is as available as bread mold.”
He paused, and added:
“As I have said, circine is the very commonest of all elements, and the simplest to obtain. A workman can make it with his pipe, adding a pinch of this fungus—as I have shown you with these humble implements.”
The chemist paused and resumed his posture, his chin gathered into his hand; his eyes, diminished by the thick lenses, on Arnbush, in that reflective watching as of one looking from a window.
And the distiller saw, in a vast sweep of vision, the effect of this discovery.
As by the rubbing of a lamp he had obtained the thing he wished for, more perfectly adapted than his wish could hope. From this day the whole world would be drunken. No human creature, having tasted of this heavenly liquor, would return to abstinence; no laws could possibly prevent its use. A thing that any man could make with a clay pipe, some seeds, and a pinch of fungus was beyond a sumptuary law. Once known, even a death sentence on the thing would be a dead letter in a statute.
And the man thrilled, in a great upward sweep of the heart, at this ruin of his enemies.
He saw what he would do. He would hold the secret, buy advertising space in every newspaper, and on a given day make the whole thing known. Once the discovery was known, he saw clearly, not even the infinity of God could prevent a drunken world.
Arnbush rose and went over to the window. The city lay dumb and silent before him. His enemies were sleeping in their beds, and he stood above them, with their ruin in his hand.
It was a great, expanded moment.
Arnbush remained with his hands behind him, looking out. There was no sound or evidence of life behind him. When, finally, he turned, the chemist was sitting in that watchful pose.
The distiller spoke, in the vigor of his victory.
“This is the greatest thing that was ever discovered!”
Neinsoul replied without moving, without a gesture.
“We consider circine,” he said, “the most important element so far released by us. The habit-forming drugs upon which we have heretofore depended are limited in their influence, and we have obtained from them only a fragmentary result. We have long sought something of universal appeal.”
“Well, you got it,” interrupted Arnbush; “the country’ll drink itself into hell on this stuff.”
In his satisfaction he overlooked the chemist’s plural pronoun.
The muscles about Neinsoul’s lips distended in a sort of weird smile.
“We shall hardly hope for that,” he said. “In fact, the effect of circine on the human body is not deleterious. Neither depression nor nausea follows its use; there are none of the unpleasant after-effects of alcohol, or the so-called habit-forming drugs. In truth, many persons of weak individuality will be physically advanced by circine.”
He continued to speak distinctly, in his thin, distant voice.
“It is the prime virtue in circine that it builds up and hardens the individuality of the user. It makes him, in the end, wholly self-sufficient. He will not go to another for any element of sensation. It is the influence of exterior organisms that the circine continually resists.
“All drugs released by us have had some psychic effect, as for example, the degenerative moral effect of opium. This psychic influence of circine is not degenerative in the individual, but it is eliminative of all influences psychic, exterior to the individual. I do not mean that it touches ordinary sensation which is of physical origin. But it removes all response to foreign psychic stimuli or physical stimuli moving from a psychic origin—as, for example, the love lure in its various psychic and psycho-physical expressions.
“Under the influence of circine, that basic element of the individual which he calls himself is built up to a completeness which will wholly reject any sensation depending upon another, whether that sensation be psychic, as in morals, or psycho-physical, as in the love lure.”
He paused abruptly, and looked up. The air entering through the window was beginning to freshen; a faint gray haze was appearing in the sky behind the city. And the chemist acted like one in haste to an appointment. He seized a tablet, in the drawer before him, tore off a sheet, wrote hastily upon it, and thrust it across the table to Arnbush.
“There is the chemical formula of circine,” he said, “and the name of the fungus. I must go.”
The distiller began to speak about his offer, the lawyer Stetman, the other partner, Lang, and what should now be done in payment and the legal transfer.
But the chemist hurried him; he could not listen; he had no time, and it was unimportant.
In some confusion and as swiftly as he could, Arnbush descended the stair and went out into the street. The door clicked behind him, and he heard the footsteps of the chemist going down as though to pass out through the basement.
Morning had now arrived. And Arnbush returned across the city to the Waldorf.
But he returned like one entering with a triumph. He walked, his shoulders thrown back, his head up, like a conquerer. The effect of this wondrous fluid, even from his taste of it, remained. He would impose his will on this crank-ridden country, and he had the power folded in his pocket.
He began to go over in his mind the things Neinsoul had said.
He had some knowledge of the phraseology of such a trade, from the chemists employed about his manufactories; and he understood the substance of the discourse. He reviewed it now carefully in detail. This stuff was circine. It was the active principle in all fermentation; one got it from green seed, heat, and a pinch of fungus. And he passed on into a scrutiny of Neinsoul’s statement about the effect of circine.
He was in this abstraction when, at the entrance to the hostelry, he stopped.
There was some bustle about the door. A limousine stood open and a young man and a girl were getting out. There was rice scattered on its fenders; and the two were radiant. Their manner was infectious; passers stopped, the hall boys and the porters had come out—all were smiling.
Arnbush followed them inside.
He drew near to the young man and the girl, and he observed them closely. It was no new incident in the common life. But before the formula he carried in his pocket the scene had a peculiar interest.
It was scheduled in his plan to cease.
He marked the power, the stimulus, the resistless charm of this thing Neinsoul had called the love lure. The hardest creature about his task paused and stood up smiling, as though the incident released within him some memory or some hope.
Arnbush walked about, thrusting through the group of persons, to keep the two within the sweep of his eye. He would miss no detail. And when they passed out of his sight and hear ing he stood for some time looking at the elevator as at the abandoned spot of some transfiguration.
Then he filled his big lungs and shrugged his shoulders. Well, there would be no more of this thing! And he went in to breakfast.
The old waiter was slow this morning and, Arnbush thought, inattentive. He spoke to him sharply.
The man was obsequious and apologetic. His wife was ill; he was in acute distress. They had been long together, and happy; dependent on each other; the twain one flesh, as the mystic words expressed it. … If she should die!
Arnbush plunged his hand into his pocket, drew out his purse and gave the man a bill. It was in three figures. But the distiller was accustomed to add substance to his sympathy—not words only, although the words were from the heart.
“There, there, Henry! She’ll pull through.” And he patted the old man on the shoulder.
This was impulse. Upon reflection he moved a little in the chair.
The memory of Neinsoul watching as from a window occurred to him.
He drank a little coffee and got up. But he could find no cigar to suit him. He tried a handful and threw them down. He wandered awhile about the corridors and finally went out. He would walk down to Stetman’s office. It was early, but the lawyer was accustomed to come in early, in order to be undisturbed at his morning’s work.
The air had come in from the sea; it was fresh and vital, and as the man walked he began to recover some measure of his poise. Several blocks down Fifth Avenue, he stopped.
A procession of small children in some religious ceremony was coming up on the other side. He waited until they were opposite; then he crossed. He walked slowly along the line, paused, and, returning, passed it again. He looked with a profound, a consuming, an eager interest at each child.
He watched the procession disappear, took a step or two, and then, hurrying to the curb, began to gesticulate wildly with his stick. A taxicab answered; he plunged in and Shouted an address.
Stetman was among his law books when his client entered. He rose from his stooped posture.
“I was working on your matter,” he said.
Arnbush came forward, shouting from the threshold:
“Well! You don’t have to work on it no longer. I got it. Do you see that, Stetman? Do you see what’s on that paper?”
He thrust Neinsoul’s formula before the astonished lawyer. The man looked at the chemical hieroglyphics and the text below it, written in a fine, accurate, thin hand.
“Where did you get this?” he said.
“Where did I get it!” cried the distiller. “You know where I got it. I got it from your firm of chemists, Lang and Neinsoul.”
The lawyer stepped back from his table.
“I didn’t see Lang,” he said, “he was not at Keator’s.”
Arnbush went on shouting in his excitement.
“Anyhow, I got it of Neinsoul! An’ you see what I’m goin’ to do with it!”
He flourished the paper a moment, wildly, before the lawyer’s strange, contracted face, and then he tore it into bits, scattering the fragments about the room.
And, oblivious to the amazement in Stetman, he went on shouting. The very act of tearing the formula seemed to increase the fury of his manner.
“You think I’m crazy, eh! Well, I ain’t crazy! What for do I want to stop a young feller from falling in love with his sweetheart? … What for do I want to break up the companionship of old people?… What for do I want to keep all the little children out of the world?… You hear what I say, Stetman?”
The lawyer thought his client was insane. He came around the table, his face drawn.
“Who have you seen?” he said.
Arnbush was now in a fury of declamation.
“Neinsoul!” he shouted. “Ain’t I told you! … Neinsoull He called me up on the telephone after you left. An’ I went over to their laboratory on Park Avenue.”
“And Neinsoul was there?”
The lawyer’s voice was low, tense, amazed.
“Sure, he was there,” Arnbush roared. “Ain’t I told you!”
The lawyer made a single exclamation.
“Good God!” he said.
Arnbush turned on him, swinging heavily on his big feet, as on some ponderous hinges.
“What for do you say, ‘Good God’?”
“Because,” replied the lawyer, “if Neinsoul was there, he got out of hell to come. … He died three years ago in Essen, poisoned by a blinding gas that he had invented for the German army.”