"Because you haven't figured on it," said he. "You haven't been circulating in Imp circles lately, as I have, where these things are discussed. Listen! A _centime_ is the hundredth part of a franc, and a franc is about nineteen cents. A cent, therefore, is a fraction more than five _centimes_. But they started it at four, the chocolate-colored idiots, after getting rid of their leprosy! When I think how that Bottle Imp has been mismanaged, I am driven--"
He illustrated that to which he was driven, by a gesture with the bottle on the table. He coughed, and took up his _resume_ of the story.
"Let that pass. They put it up at four _centimes_, and without Keawe's knowledge that she had anything to do with it, Keawe's wife got an old man to buy it, and she took it off his hands at three. The Kanaka soon found out that he was now carrying his eternal damnation in his wife's name, and he procured an old skipper or mate, or some such fellow in a state of intoxication, to buy it of her for two, on the agreement that he would take it again for one. Here they were, frittering away untold fortunes, each trying to go to perdition to save the other--it makes me tired! But the old bos'n or whatever he was, said he was going, you know where, anyhow, and figured that the Bottle was a good thing to take with him, and kept it. And there's where the Kanakas got out of a mighty tight place--"
"And the Bottle disappeared and passed into history!" I broke in. I was really absorbed in the conversation, in spite of a slight vertigo, now that we had got into the field of literature where I felt at home.
"Passed into--nothing!" he snorted. "Passed into the state of being the Whole Thing! Became It! Went on the road to the possession of the Federal Imp Company as the sole asset of the corporation. Folks'll see now pretty quick, whether it passed into history or not! Yes, I should say so!"
"Who's got it now?" I whispered. I was so excited that I found myself sitting across the table, and us mingling our breaths like true conspirators. He had a good working majority in the breaths, however.
"Who's the Charlemagne, the J. Caesar, the Napoleon of the present day?"
he whispered in reply, after looking furtively over his shoulder. "It don't need a Sherlock Holmes to tell that, does it?"
"Not," said I, "not J. P.--"
"No," said he, "It's John D.--"
But before he finished the name he crept to the door and peered down the aisle, and then whispered it in my ear so sibilantly that I felt for a minute as I used to do when I got water in my ear when swimming. But I noticed it very little in my astonishment at the fact he had imparted to me. I felt that I was pale. He rose again and prowled about as if for eavesdroppers. I felt myself a Guy Fawkes, an Aaron Burr, an--well, anything covert and dangerous.
"He bought this Bottle Imp," my companion went on, resuming his seat, "of the old sailing-master, or whatever he was--the man with the downward tendency and the jag. What J. D. wanted was power, just as Caesar and Napoleon wanted it in their times. But the same kind of power wouldn't do. Armies were the tools of nations then; now they are the playthings. Now nations are the tools of money, and wealth runs the machine. This emperor of ours chose between having the colors dip as he went by, and owning the fellows that made 'em dip. He gave the grand-stand the go-by, and took the job of being the one to pull the string that turned on the current that moved the ruling force that controlled the power back of the power behind the throne. D'ye understand?"
"It's a little complex," said I, "the way you state it, but--"
"It'll all be clear in the morning," he said. "Anyway, that's what he chose. And what is he? The Emperor of Coin. He was a modest business man a few years ago. Suddenly the wealth of a continent began flowing into his control. It rolled in and rolled in, every coin making him stronger and stronger, until now the business of the world takes out insurance policies on his life and scans the reports of his health as if the very basis of society were John D. You-Know-Who. Emperors court his favor, and the financial world shakes when he walks. You don't think for a minute that this could be done by any natural means, do you?"
"But the price of the bottle was one _centime_!" said I, my altruism coming uppermost once more. "One _centime_: and he is no longer young!"
"Exactly," he answered, "and he's got to sell it, or go to--Well, he's just about got to sell it!"
"But how?" I queried. "What coin is there smaller than a _centime_--what he paid?"
"All been figured out," said he airily. "Who solved the puzzle I don't know; but I guess it was Senator Depew. Know what a mill is?"
"A mill? Yes," said I. "A factory? A pugilistic encounter? A money of account?"
"Yes," said he, "a 'money of account.' Never coined. One-tenth of a cent. _One-half a centime!_ Have you heard of Senator Aldrich's currency bill, S. F. 41144? It's got a clause in it providing for the coinage of the mill. And there's where I come in. I'm an unelected legislator--third house, you know. Let the constructive statesman bring in their little bills. I'm satisfied to put 'em through! S. F. 41144 is going to be put through, and old J. D.'ll sell his Bottle, Imp and all.
Price, one mill. When this grip epidemic started in, he got a touch of it, and I'll state that a sick man feels a little nervous with that Imp in stock. So they wired for me. It's going to be a fight all right!"
"Why, who will oppose the bill?" said I. "No one will know its object."
"Lots of folks will oppose it," said he. "Every association of clergymen in the country is liable to turn up fighting it tooth and nail. There are too many small coins now for the interests of the people who depend on contribution boxes. The Sunday-schools will all be against it. And the street-car companies won't want the cent subdivided. Then it'll be hard to convince Joe Cannon; he's always looking for a nigger in the fence, and there _is_ one here, you understand. But the mill's going to be coined, all the same!"
"But," said I, "who will buy the diabolical thing for a mill? If Keawe and his wife had such trouble selling it for a _centime_, it will be impossible to dispose of it for a mill, absolutely impossible! It's the irreducible minimum!"
"I take it, Sir," said he, with a recurrence of the capital S, "that you are not engaged in what Senator Lodge in our conference last night called 'hot finance'?"
"No," I admitted, for in spite of the orthoepic error, I understood him.
"No, I am not--exactly."
"I inferred as much from your remark," said he. "When there's anything to be done, too large for individual power, or dangerous in its nature, or, let us say, repugnant to some back-number criminal law, or, as in this case, dangerous to the individual's soul's salvation, what do you do? Why you organize a corporation, if you know your business, and turn the whole thing over to it--and there you are. The Federal Imp Company will take over the Bottle Imp at the price of one mill. Mr. R. won't own it any more. His stock will be non-assessable, and all paid up by the transfer of the Imp, and there can't be any liability on it. He can retain control of it if he wants to--and you notice he generally wants to, and can laugh in the Imp's face. We've got all kinds of legal opinions on _that_. And whoever controls that company will rule the world. That Imp is the greatest corporate asset that ever existed. All that's needed is for the president of the corporation to wish for anything, or the board of directors to pass a resolution, and the thing asked for comes a-running. The railways, steamships, banks, factories, lands--everything worth having--are just as good as taken over.
"Why it's the Universal Merger, the Trust of Trusts! The stock-holders of the Federal Imp Company will be the ruling class of the world, a perpetual aristocracy; and the man with fifty-one per cent. of the stock, or proxies for it, will be Emperor, Czar, Kaiser, Everything!"
"But this is stupendous!" I exclaimed: for, being a student of political economy--"economics," they call it now--I at once perceived the significance of his statements. "This is terrible! It is revolution! It is the end of democracy! Can't it be stopped?"
"M'h'm," said he quietly, evidently assenting to my rather excited statement; and then in reply to my question, he added with another chuckle, "Stop nothing! Federal injunction won't do it: presidential veto won't do it: nor calling out the militia: nor anything else. For the Imp controls the courts, the president, _and_ the army; and J. D. R.
runs the Imp--fifty-one per cent. of the Imp stock! The socialists will go out campaigning in favor of the government's taking over the Federal Imp Company, but the Imp controls the government--and the socialists, too, when you come down to brass nails. Oh, it's a cinch, a timelock, leadpipe cinch! The stuff's off with everybody else, if we can get this bill through!"
I was shocked into something like a cataleptic state, and sat dazed for a while. Either this or the strong cigar, or something, so affected me that, as he passed the flask to me for the fourth time, the smoking compartment seemed to swim about me as the train rolled thunderously onward through the night. To steady myself I gazed fixedly at my extraordinary fellow traveler as he sat, his now well-nigh empty bottle before him, peering into it from time to time as if for some potent servant of his own. Suddenly he leaned back and laughed more diabolically than ever.
"Ha, ha, ha!" he roared. "You ought to have been with us last night in his library! Aldrich and Depew and some of the others were there, and we were checking over our list of sure votes in the House. The old man had the grip, as I said a while ago, and privately, I'll state I think he's scared stiff; for every fifteen minutes we got a bulletin from his doctors and messages from him to rush S. F. 41144 to its passage, regardless, or he'd accept a bid he'd got for the Bottle Imp from Sir Thomas Lipton, who wants it for some crazy scheme regarding lifting the Cup. All the while, there stood the Bottle with the Imp in it. When the grip news was coming in there was nothing doing with his Impship. But whenever we began discussing his transfer to the Company, the way business picked up in that bottle was a caution! Why, you could hear him stabbing the stopper with his tail, and grinding his horns against the sides of the bottle, and fighting like a weasel in a trap, in such a rage that the Bottle glowed like a red-hot iron. It was shameful! One of the lawyers took the horrors, and had to be taken home in a carriage--threw a conniption fit every block! Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!
Oh! it was great stuff!"
"I don't see--" I began.
"No? Don't you?" he queried, between the satanic chuckles. "Well, by George, the Imp saw, all right! He saw that modern financial ingenuity has found a way to flimflam the devil himself. He saw, Sir (here his voice assumed an oratorical orotund, and the capital S came in again), that our corporation lawyers have found a spoon long enough so that we can safely sup with Satan! Why, let me ask you once, what did the Imp go into the Bottle deal for in the first place? To get the aforesaid soul.
You can see how he'd feel, now that the price is down to the last notch but one, to have it sold to a corporation, with no more soul than a rabbit! If--that--don't beat the--the devil, what does?"
It all dawned upon me now. The reasonableness of the entire story appealed to me. I reached for the paper. There it was: "Federal Imp Company: Charter powers very broad, taking in almost the entire field of business." I looked at the lobbyist. He had dropped asleep with his head on the table beside the empty cocktail bottle. Again things seemed to swim, and I lapsed into a state of something like coma, from which I was aroused by some one shaking me by the shoulder.
"Berth's ready, suh," said the porter, and passed to my companion.
"Hyah's Devil's Gulch Sidin', suh," said he, rousing the slumbering lobbyist. "You get off, hyah, suh!"
He passed out of the door with a Chesterfieldian bow and good night. I passed a sleepless and anxious night. The shock, or something, made me quite ill. I have not yet recovered my peace of mind. An effort which I made to place the matter before Doctor Byproduct, the president of the university of which I am an alumnus, led to such a stern reproof that I was forced to subside. The doctor said that the story was a libel upon a great and good man who had partially promised the university an endowment of ten millions of dollars. I am ready, however, to appear before any congressional committee which may be appointed to investigate the matter, or before the Interstate Commerce Commission, and to testify to the facts as above written, if it costs me my career.
"By gad, sir!" shouted the Colonel, breaking a long silence. "That infernal scheme would work!"
The party went one by one to their tents. Soon no one but the Colonel and the Hired Man were left.
"It sounds to me," remarked the Hired Man oracularly.
CHAPTER XII
"If these lovely little waterfalls," asserted the Bride, as she gazed upon the graceful Tower Falls, "could only have a fair chance, they would win fame--but they are overshadowed here--and they don't seem to care."
Undine Falls, the Virginia Cascade, Mystic Falls, Kepler Cascade and Crystal Falls were in the mind of the Bride; but she might have mentioned many more, which in their incursion into the Park they had not seen.
"This," said the Artist, "is no place to look at, and leave--it is a region for the artist to live in, to study, to make a part of his life, and finally, to understand."
"I reckon," said the Hired Man, "that he'd git homesick f'r the corn country after a winter or so."