Page:Weird Tales Volume 26 Number 01 (1935-07).djvu/27

"But the British don't want to make anything of the incident," grunted Harkness. "They agree the boat had no business trying to smuggle dope into the United States——"

"They'll talk differently when our British Export branches get busy. And a protest note from them can be magnified into an ugly thing. You know that, Harkness."

"I know," said Harkness, his amiable smile beginning to make its appearance on his good-natured face. "I'm just bringing up, in advance, the objections a few of our directors may bring up this afternoon."

"Those objections will be quickly disposed of," said Kearns, lips thinning masterfully under his hawk nose. "It's war—whenever we want it—and you and I know that if no one else does!"

"Yes,” nodded Kearns. "War——"

He stopped. Waiter number 34 had appeared suddenly beside them with the ordered cigars on his little tray. Harkness stared at him keenly with his little, diamond-point blue eyes. The man's emaciated white face showed no sign that he had overheard anything.

"Will that be all, sir?"

"That's all," Harkness said.

"Damn the fellow," Kearns snapped peevishly, when waiter number 34 had left. "He moves like a shadow!"

Harkness grunted, and settled down in his great leather chair a little deeper. He crossed his legs and stared out the window at the shifting human patterns on the Fifth Avenue sidewalk.

"War, Kearns! You know what that means. You remember the last one."

Kearns' commanding gray eyes narrowed almost dreamily.

"Yes. Day and night shifts in your steel mills and chemical plants. All my marginal copper mines, now closed because there isn't enough market to run them profitably, opened again. All my coal mines humming. Metal and industrial stocks up a thousand per cent."

Precise small puffs came from his lips, from a cigar which burned with microscopic evenness around the ash-edge.

"But the country as a whole profits as well, Harkness. We mustn't forget that. Jobs for thousands, renewed spirit, young men taken into the service instead of rusting in idleness—all this will happen."

"Unless the war ends too quickly," remarked Harkness.

"Again, you only anticipate some of our objecting directors in pessimism, I think," Kearns smiled. "You know we can keep war flaming for months past its normal stopping-point. . . ."

His breath hissed between his teeth. Outright anger appeared on his spare, dominant face. Waiter number 34 had materialized beside their chairs again as though out of nowhere.

"Well? Well?" he snapped to the man.

"Pardon me, sir," the waiter murmured, voice deprecating, "the chef desires to know what salad he shall prepare——"

"Tell Louis to use his own initiative. We'll leave the rest of the luncheon to him. He ought to know what we like by now, and what will go well with the fish."

"Very good, sir."

The man glided away, his tall, thin figure seeming to melt into the shadows of the huge clubroom rather than disappear normally through the end doorway.

Kearns' eyes were icy as he gazed after him.

"Did it ever occur to you," he said to Harkness, "what a lot of things can be overheard by servants?"

"It's occurred to me many times," said