When Worlds Collide (When Worlds Collide 1)

He also had intelligence. His university companions considered it a trivial side-issue when he was graduated from Harvard with a magna cum laude; but the conservative investment-house with which he afterward became affiliated appreciated the adjunct of brains to a personality so compelling. His head was large and square, and it required his big physique to give that head proportion. He was blue-eyed, sandy-haired. He possessed a remarkably deep voice.

He was entirely normal. His attainments beyond the average were not unusual. He belonged more or less to that type of young American business man upon whom the older generation places its hope and trust. Eve was really a much more remarkable human being—not on account of her beauty, but because of her intellectual brilliance, and her unique training from her father.

Yet Eve was not the sort who preferred “intellectual” men; intellectualism, as such, immensely bored her. She liked the outright and vigorous and “normal.” She liked Tony Drake; and Tony, knowing this, was more than baffled by her attitude to-night. An emotional net seemed to have been stretched between them, through which he could not quite reach her; what the substance of the net was, he could not determine; but it balked him when, as never before, he wanted nearness to her. He believed her when she told him that her tantalizing abstraction was not because of another man. Then, what was its cause?

Tony was drawn from his reverie by the appearance of Douglas Balcom, senior partner of his firm. His presence here surprised Tony. No reason why old Balcom should not drop in, if he pleased; but the rest of the guests were much younger.

Balcom, halting beside Tony, reflected the general discontent of the day by waving at the city and murmuring: “In the soup. Everything’s in the soup; and now nobody cares. Why does nobody care?”

Tony disagreed, but he deferred to Balcom by saying: “It seems to me, a lot of people care.”

“I mean nobody who’s in the know cares. I mean the four or five men who know what’s going on—underneath. I mean,” particularized old Balcom, “John Borgan doesn’t care. Did you see him to-day?”

“Borgan? No.”

“Did you hear of his buying anything?”

“No.”

“Selling anything?”

“No.”

“That’s it.” Balcom thought out loud for a while. Tony listened. “Borgan’s the fourth richest man in America; and normally the most active, personally. He’ll be the richest, if he keeps up. He wants to be the richest. Oil—mines—rails—steel—shipping—he’s in everything. He’s only fifty-one. To my way of thinking, he’s smarter than anyone else; and this looks like a market—superficially—which was made for Borgan. But for two weeks he’s gone dead. Won’t do a thing, either way; takes no position. Paralyzed. Why?”

“He may be resting on his oars.”

“You know damn’ well he isn’t. Not Borgan—now. There’s only one way I can explain; he knows something damned important that the rest of us don’t. There’s an undertone—don’t you feel it?—that’s different. I met Borgan to-day, face to face; we shook hands. I don’t like the look of him. I tell you he knows something he’s afraid of. He did a funny thing, by the way, Tony. He asked me: ‘How well do you know Cole Hendron?’

“I said, ‘Pretty well.’ I said: ‘Tony Drake knows him damn’ well.’ He said: ‘You tell Hendron, or have Drake tell Hendron, he can trust me.’ That’s exactly what he said, Tony—tell Hendron that he can trust N. J. Borgan. Now, what the hell is that all about?”

“I don’t know,” said Tony, and almost added, in his feeling of the moment: “I don’t care.” For Eve was returning.

She slipped away from her partner and signaled to Tony to see her alone. Together they sought the solitude of the end of the terrace.

“Tony, can you start these people home?”

“Gladly,” rejoiced Tony. “But I can stay?”

“I’m afraid not. I’ve got to work.”

“Now? To-night?”

“As soon as I possibly can. Tony, I’ll tell you. The ship is in, and Ransdell was taken off at quarantine and brought here. He’s in Father’s study now.”

“Who’s Ransdell?”

“Nobody I know. I haven’t set eyes on him yet, Tony. He’s just the messenger from Africa. You see, Tony, some—some things were being sent rush, by airplane and by messenger, to Father from Africa. Well, they’ve arrived; and I do his measuring for him, you know.”

“What measuring?”

“The delicate measuring, like—like the position and amount of movement shown by stars and other bodies on astronomical plates. For weeks—for months, in fact, Tony—the astronomers in the Southern Hemisphere have been watching something.”

“What sort of a something, Eve?”

“Something of a sort never seen before, Tony. A sort of body that they knew existed by the millions, probably, all through the universe—something they were sure must be, but the general existence of which has never been actually proved. It—it may be the most sensational fact for us, from the beginning to the end of time. I can’t tell you more than that to-night, Tony; yet by to-morrow we may be telling it to all the world. Rumors are getting out; and so some scientist, who will be believed, must make an authoritative announcement. And the scientists of the world have selected Father to make it.

“Now, help me, Tony. You clear these people out; and then you run along. For I’ve measurements to make and report to Father; and he has to check over calculations made by the best men in the southern half of the world. Then, by tomorrow, we may know, for certain, what is going to happen to us all.”