Page:Weird Tales Volume 26 Number 01 (1935-07).djvu/28

Harkness dryly. "And for that reason I try to keep servants loyal to me. You know—jolly 'em along a bit. But there's no real danger in them if you avoid quoting actual figures and facts in their hearing. . . . Say, it's confoundedly cold in here, today, isn't it?"

"It is rather chilly," Kearns acquiesced, still glaring in the direction of the door through which waiter number 34 had gone.

Harkness finished his martini and chewed at the olive in the bottom.

"No use mincing words, Kearns. We and the interests we control can make a war out of the All Alone incident. We shall do so, in effect, this afternoon at the board meeting. Then we can phone our brokers to buy the right stocks, and begin buying raw materials for our factories at the present peace prices. We'll need some ships of our own, too. We can buy back a lot of the bottoms we sawed off at armistice terms seventeen years ago."

Kearns' thin lips parted a little in one of his rare smiles. Small, even teeth showed for a moment.

"War, Harkness," he said slowly. "Wartime orders, wartime profits. . . . Why, I remember a statistician of mine once figured up the profits I made from the battle of Verdun alone——"

Once more a shadow fell across the two men as waiter number 34 appeared beside their chairs.

Into Kearns' frosty eyes crept an expression that would have made any of his employees tremble. But waiter number 34 seemed not to notice.

"Beg pardon, sir," he murmured in his flat, dull voice, "but I thought I heard you gentlemen mention war. Is it your opinion there will be war again soon?"

Dull red surged in Kearns' gray cheek at such colossal impudence. But Harkness shot him a glance that commanded caution.

"There are always wars, my man," he said coolly. "There has never in history been a time when war was not being waged on some portion of the earth's surface."

"But I mean war such as the last big one, sir," said the waiter deferentially. "The World War. Are we facing another such catastrophe?"

"Who can tell?" Harkness said stiffly.

"You can take these glasses away," snapped Kearns.

"Certainly, sir." Waiter number 34 inclined his head. But he moved slowly as he put the empty glasses on his little club tray, and he did not move off at once.

"And I thought I heard one of you mention the battle of Verdun. Were either of you in Verdun, might I inquire?"

Kearns' eyes were icy lightnings. But Harkness, whose rough diplomacy had been a large factor in his enormous financial success, said:

"Hardly! Do you think we're the type to make good bayonet manipulators? I think I can say that our value to our country in time of war is far greater as industrial executives than it would be as soldiers in a trench."

"Of course, sir! I can realize that. But, begging your pardon, you are both in excellent physical shape, and you are both under sixty—I thought perhaps you had been officers during the war."

"That will be all——" Kearns began in a brittle tone.

But waiter number 34 went on.

"Quite a battle, Verdun," he said, gently, abstractedly. "I was in it. I was just a kid at the time. Nineteen. And as raw as any recruit that ever was shipped to fight another man's battles for him."

"Your reminiscences are not at all——" said Kearns in a strangled tone.

"I remember one hour particularly,"