The Last Days of Night(3)

And yet if he was successful, he would see Edison’s illuminated empire torn down.

Paul entered 65 Fifth at eleven in the evening. The bulky men behind the glass windows carried their firearms casually. There was no need for bellicose posturing. Only a very stupid person would have walked into that building unafraid.

A bearded man of middle age met Paul by the building’s central staircase. He didn’t smile as he extended his hand. “Charles Batchelor.”

“I know who you are,” said Paul. Batchelor was Edison’s right-hand man: the head of his laboratory and his chief goon as well. If Edison required dirt be dug up, it was Batchelor who would till the soil. The newspapers said the two were never far apart. But unlike his employer, Batchelor granted no interviews. His face never joined Edison’s on the front page.

“He’s been waiting for you” was all that Batchelor said. He led Paul up the stairs. Edison’s private office was on the fourth floor. Batchelor opened the oak double doors and ushered Paul inside before hovering silently in the entryway. It was as if he were invisible when not in receipt of further instruction.

The office was richly adorned. Chairs upholstered in Spanish leather. A glazed mahogany desk, covered in electrical devices. A sleeping cot tucked into the far corner. The rumor was that Edison slept only three hours a night. As with most rumors concerning Thomas Edison, Paul wasn’t sure whether to believe it.

Along the patterned walls, beautiful electric bulbs, shaped like roses, had been affixed every few feet. And dear Lord, were they ever bright.

Paul looked down at his hands. He realized that he had never actually seen his own hands under electric lights before. He could see the blue veins running underneath his skin. Freckles, pockmarks, scars, dirt, the ugly creases a man accumulates by the time he’s twenty-six. His telltale middle finger, always twitching when he was nervous. Paul felt not only that the lights were new, but that he was. A spark of the filament, and he had been revealed as something he never thought he might be.

Behind the deep mahogany desk, smoking a cigar, sat Thomas Edison.

He was more handsome than Paul had expected, thinner than he seemed in photographs, boasting a strong midwestern jaw. Even in his forties, his hair remained unkempt as a schoolboy’s. It would make a lesser man look old; it made Edison look like he had more important things about which to care. In the harsh light, Paul could even make out the gray of his eyes.

“Good evening.”

“Why am I here, Mr. Edison?”

“Straight to the point. I appreciate that quality in a lawyer.”

“I’m not your lawyer.”

Edison raised his eyebrows curiously, then slid a sheet of paper across the desk. Paul hesitated before coming forward. He didn’t want to cede position. But he also wanted to see what Edison was showing him.

It was a mock-up of the front page of The New York Times. MET DEATH IN THE WIRES, screamed the headline. HORRIFYING SPECTACLE—A LINEMAN ROASTED ON A NETWORK OF WIRES. Down the column ran a fevered article denouncing the dangers of electrical power. The editors were questioning the safety of running cables stuffed with raw and poorly understood energy across the city.

“This is tomorrow’s paper,” said Paul. “How did you get this?”

Edison ignored the question. “Your little firm, what’s the name? Housed right near there, aren’t you?”

“I saw it happen.”

“You did?”

“I saw the man lit up and I was there when the firemen cut his corpse from the wires. But the cables on lower Broadway aren’t yours. And they’re not my client’s either. They’re U.S. Illuminating Company wires. And since I’m not Mr. Lynch’s lawyer, thank heaven, this has nothing to do with me. Or the dispute between yourself and George Westinghouse.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“What am I doing here?”

Edison paused before he spoke again. “Mr. Cravath, there’s a war on, in case you haven’t noticed. Within the next few years, someone is going to build an electrical system that lights this entire nation. It could be me. It could be Mr. Westinghouse. But after today, it’s not going to be Mr. Lynch. The press will have him chewed to a nub by morning.”

“Sounds like a good day for my side.”

Edison flicked ashes from his cigar onto a gold tray.

“In the past year,” he said, “I have had many opponents to whom I might direct my attention. After today I will have only one. Your client. Either I will win, or Mr. Westinghouse will win. It’s that simple. My company is ten times the size of his. I have a seven-year head start on manufacturing this technology. J. P. Morgan himself has promised us bottomless coffers for our expansion. And me…Well. I think you know who I am.”

Edison took a deep puff from his cigar before blowing a plume into the air. “I brought you here to ask you this: Do you really think you have a chance?”

He regarded Paul as a dogcatcher might look upon a soon-to-be-euthanized stray.

“Mr. Cravath, I invented the light bulb. George Westinghouse did not. So I’m suing him for everything he’s got. He’s a rich man, and you’re about to squander his fortune trying to beat me at a game I’ve already won. By the time this is over, I will own Westinghouse’s company. I will own your law firm. So stop. The line is drawn. Whoever is in my way is going to get hurt. For your sake, I am asking that you not be one of them.”