The Last Days of Night(89)

There was no chance of turning back.

Paul followed Agnes toward the glittering ball in search of his target.

All the seats had been removed from the auditorium, allowing the thousand guests to spread freely across the floor of the great domed room. Strings of electric lights hung from the balconies, stretching toward the stage in blinking spiderwebs. From the stage, a forty-person orchestra played a spirited waltz. The dancers swayed forward and back, the waves of motion splashing against the solid rocks of conversation that dotted the floor.

Paul was a small trawler sailing into the rough seas of this crowd. Stepping slowly into the gala, he was practically knocked off his feet by a drunken couple who spun wildly through their dance.

“Careful,” counseled Agnes. “We can’t have you making a scene.”

Paul watched Agnes glide across the floor. She was a bird in flight over the choppy ocean. But Agnes was no gull, he thought as she smiled, putting up bulwarks against the curious glances being cast in her direction. She was a hawk.

“Over there,” said Paul, turning his head away.

Only fifty feet away was Thomas Edison, chatting amiably with acquaintances. He looked strangely younger in his tuxedo, the white bow tie askew below his chin. He was the only member of his circle without a drink in his hand.

“Do you know how to waltz?” asked Agnes.

“What?”

She took his right hand with her left and held it at the level of her waist before grasping his left hand with her right. Then she spun.

It took Paul a few moments to realize that she was leading him onto the dance floor in a three-count twirl. He tried to remember the last time he’d danced a waltz. Her perfume washed over him and for a moment it was as if he were back with her at his parents’ house on a warm Tennessee night.

“Steady,” whispered Agnes. “Just follow me.”

They spun across the dance floor, orbiting the other dancers. The room was a constellation of the very latest fashions. At first he clomped against the glazed wood floor. But as she tugged at his hands she gave shape to his movements.

“Slow,” she whispered. “Quick-quick, slow. There it is, yes.”

Paul struggled to fight the dizziness.

She’d already told him that he needn’t worry about the presence of Henry Jayne, who was in Philadelphia with a sick relative. For an affianced couple, they spent little time together. Was that how it was done among the rich? He didn’t think he could bear to be in the same room with the man. And he certainly didn’t want to have such a meeting take place with his hand softly touching Agnes’s hip.

He felt her warm and even breath on his neck. He felt the muscles along her back tense and release with the rhythm of their dance. Paul knew that he wasn’t only doing this for Westinghouse. He didn’t need to win only to punish Edison. He needed Agnes to see that he was as worthy as Henry Jayne.

“Edison is thirty feet behind you,” she whispered. “While our man is ten feet over there. Come on.”

Agnes pressed at Paul’s hands, urging him through the crush of partygoers. They approached a circle of five chattering men in perfect white collars and long black tails. None was under the age of fifty, and all boasted the comfortable waistlines of lives well lived. At the center, Paul caught the eye of a large man, the only one of the lot without a beard. Instead, a thick brown mustache provided a striking contrast of color across his face. The hair parted across his head was a chalk white. His cheeks looked as if they had never once been forced into a smile.

It was J. P. Morgan, the man he had come to see.





Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.

—BILL GATES



THE SONG CAME to a stop with a long and satisfying bow stroke from the violins. The guests clapped absentmindedly, their graciousness as instinctive as a cough.

Agnes was studying Morgan’s circle. “They look relatively drunk,” she whispered conspiratorially. “Wait here.” She pulled free of Paul’s grip. Before he could ask any questions, she had stepped away and dived into the middle of the group.

“Mr. Routledge!” she cooed to one of Morgan’s associates. “How was Brussels?”

Paul watched as Agnes maneuvered herself into the men’s conversation. They were rabbits to her fox. Paul heard their sudden laughter, saw their jockeying for position as each tried to impress the beautiful woman shimmying gaily before them. Paul stood mutely to the side of their conversation, uninvited and straining to listen surreptitiously.

In under a minute, Agnes had slipped her body into their circle in such a way that Morgan was cut off from the center. It was so subtle as to be not at all rude, and yet Morgan’s isolation was unmistakable.

Paul understood then what she was doing. If he had been impressed before, he was now doubly so. Morgan was not accustomed to being ignored. Paul began to sense boredom in the old man’s stance.

Morgan stepped back from the group with a glass of Scotch in his hand. He walked across the dance floor, Paul following close behind. Morgan received a series of nods and smiles from the people he passed, but none seemed to interest him. He walked into the rear hallway and through the door of the gentlemen’s lounge.

Paul waited ten seconds before following him in.

The lounge was long. Marble countertops lined one side and a row of toilet stalls, likely stocked with the new chain-pull design, lined the other. On the far wall, a chaise provided a comfortable perch for the weary. When Paul entered, Morgan was reclining onto the chaise, still clutching his glass.